PPST, the PostScript Printer Speed Test

In September 2000, below was posted to the newsgroup comp.lang.postscript with information regarding PPST.

Caveat emptor -- PPST makes Dhrystone look like a good benchmark.  It has a 
nasty habit of ranking  different configurations of the same RIP in *exact* 
reverse of their actual performance, and some versions of it have been known to 
go into infinite loops when run on fast enough RIPs.  It's also easy for an 
ethically-challanged RIP to spot, and arrange for its time-of-day clock to 
suddenly slow down;-)

PPST only measures how fast a RIP interprets PPST, nothing else, but it has the 
advantage of measuring it to an impressive number of spurious decimal places, 
which makes it very popular with clock-watchers, bean-counters, and jobsworths.

In the PostScript world, more than almost any other area I know, it is VITALLY 
importmant to benchmark with real world data.  And make sure you measure 
``click-to-clunk'' time, too, not anything depending on a clock inside the 
printer.

And it's not like you don't have any real jobs lying around, right? ;-)