XEROX Network Services (XNS) is a network architecture developed by (no surprise) Xerox. It predates Novell, which I understand was developed using XNS as a foundation, and which I think may be a superset of XNS.
Interpress was a precursor to PostScript and is similar in some ways.

I understand that XNS was a supported networking protocol under 4.3BSD. Is XNS still supported by BSD? What about Linux?

The reason I ask is that we have quite a few old and discontinued but very large, fast, and durable printers, with a few old and painfully slow PostScript Raster Image Processor front ends. My understanding is that a RIP takes PostScript (1 or 2), RIPs it to Interpress, and sends the pages to the printer via XNS. The printer then rapidly prints the job at low cost per page.
The biggest issue is that the RIP can’t handle modern PostScript.
Another issue is that we have only a few RIPs compared to the number of printers, which is a big bottleneck.
It takes a very long time to RIP, but the printer can store a number of jobs awaiting processing and typically many copies are printed of a job, so this is secondary.
I want to build a Linux (or BSD) front end that will RIP PostScript and send Interpress to the printer over XNS. I have looked at Interpress and think the PS to Interpress is doable, but I am less comfortable with the XNS issue.

Suggestions?