impressario(1)

NAME
     Impressario - printing and scanning server environment for SGI systems

DESCRIPTION
     Impressario provides a printing and scanning server environment for
     Silicon Graphics workstations. Printing and scanning solutions are
     provided for driver developers, application programmers and end users.

   Printing Environment
     The Impressario printing environment is built on top of the AT&T System V
     printer spooling system. Model files, filters and printer drivers are
     provided to convert a wide variety of file types, including ISO text
     files, many different image file formats, and PostScript documents to a
     format suitable for both raster printers and PostScript printers. Using
     the Impressario host-based PostScript interpreter it is possible to print
     PostScript documents to non-PostScript printers with performance that
     greatly surpasses most printer-based PostScript interpreters.

     Impressario provides support for a wide range of printers, from low cost
     color to high speed black and white printers.

     The Impressario Developer's Kit contains a battery of solutions for
     printer driver developers and application programmers who need to provide
     printing from their programs. For driver developers sample source code is
     provided for a spooling system model file, printer driver, and graphical
     options panel. Specifications are provided for writing Impressario
     compliant print filters, drivers and graphical options panels.  For
     application writers and driver developers, the developer's kit also
     contains three printing related libraries. The libraries libspool and
     libprintui make it easy to add printing capabilities to any application.
     The third library, libpod allows a printer driver to maintain a database
     of printer status information and provides applications with a network
     transparent API for querying the status of a printer.


   Scanning Environment
     The Impressario scanning environment is a completely new architecture for
     generic scanner support.  Impressario scanner application programs and
     Impressario scanner drivers run as separate executables in an open
     architecture, enabling any Impressario-compatible scanner application to
     interact with any Impressario-compatible scanner driver.

     gscan(1) is a graphical scanning tool that is an Impressario scanner
     application program.  As such, it can scan from any Impressario scanner
     driver, including special drivers that can scan from any SGI monitor and
     even from SGI image files.

     New scanners are added to the system using the scanners(1M) tool, which
     is accessible through System Manager or via the command line.
     For application developers, the API that gscan(1) uses to interact with
     scanner drivers is available in libscan(3) as part of the Impressario
     Developer's Kit.  For scanner driver developers, a scanner driver
     development kit is also available as part of the Impressario Developer's
     Kit.


   General Development Environment
     The Impressario developer's kit also contains two libraries of general
     interest to software developers. The first library, libstiff, provides an
     API for writing and reading streamable TIFF 6.0 compatible image files
     for interchange between filters and drivers. The second library, libimp,
     provides an API for reading, writing and manipulating SGI Image Format
     files. libimp also provides image zooming and a large selection of color
     space conversion routines.

NOTE
     Please read the release notes for Impressario.  They contain the most
     recent information about the product. Release notes are provided on-line
     and can be read using the grelnotes(1) or relnotes(1) programs, or from
     the system Toolchest's Help menu.  In addition, the directory
     /usr/impressario contains additional information of interest to end users
     and developers.

SEE ALSO
     General interest: print(1), gscan(1), scanners(1M)
     Printing Developers: libspool(3), libpod(3), libprintui(3X)
     Scanning Developers: libscan(3), libstiff(3)
     General Development: libstiff(3), libimp(3)

FILES
     /usr/impressario    Directory of Impressario specific information,
                         specifications and example code.