[Bug-gs] Bug? -dQUIET and Postscript print operator

[Gerry de Koning]

I have not found any reference to this problem in the FAQs or
documentation.

When the rendered output of the PostScript showpage operator
is sent to stdout (using -sOutputFile=-), the output of the print
operator is still sent to stdout, even when -q or -dQUIET have
been specified.

The Red Book says the output of print should go to the
printer's stdout, which is usually some sort of operator
interface;  output of print should not go onto the rendered pages.

(1) Should -q and -dQUIET disable the PostScript print operator?

(2) If not, should there be a command option to disable print?

(3) Is there a workaround?

This is important when processing PostScript files from MS's
PS driver, version 5, which includes the following lines for
progress reporting:

...
statusdict begin (%%[ ProductName: ) print product print ( ]%%)= flush end
...
(%%[Page: 1]%%) =
...
(%%[LastPage]%%) =
...

(I would be happy if -q and -dQUIET modified the behaviour of print
to send its output to stderr.  That way error messages would not
simply disappear, but neither would they pollute the rendered output.)

If the = operator did not internally call the print operator, the fixes and
workarounds would also have to deal with =.