Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!indri!ames!oliveb!pyramid!prls!philabs!linus!mbunix!rachamp
From: rachamp@mbunix.mitre.org (Richard A. Champeaux)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: mCAD & printers
Summary: PLT: and screen output.
Message-ID: <56067@linus.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jun 89 13:18:35 GMT
References: <17437@louie.udel.EDU> <5160043@hplsla.HP.COM>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: rachamp@mbunix (Champeaux)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass.
Lines: 37

In article <5160043@hplsla.HP.COM> tomb@hplsla.HP.COM (Tom Bruhns) writes:
>>
>Just last week there was a posting here in comp.sys.amiga from 
>jvmiller@plato.rdrc.rpi.edu.  He and a friend(?) are working on a
>utility that will take HP-GL command files and print them to a
>graphics (dot-matrix) printer.  They are apparently about ready
>to release it to beta testing.  I don't know if they have any
>commercial aspirations or are planning to release it to the
>public domain or what.  I believe it also puts plots on the screen,
                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>but I'm not sure about that one.
>
>
>Tom Bruhns
>tomb%hplsla@hplabs.hp.com


   I'm the other author of PLT:.  We're going to release it real soon now,
probably Monday (We're still putting some last minute touches on it).  We're
going to release to a few people to test it first (actually, to anyone who
requests it) to catch any glaring bugs we might have missed.  Then we'll
release it to public domain, through comp.binaries/sources.amiga first, and
then any other way we can think of.  We're more interested in fame, than
fortune at the moment.
   The current version only prints to the printer because we
never thought of sending it anywhere else.  But I really like the idea of 
sending it to a screen.  It would be trivial to implement, and would be
very good for previewing plots.  Anyone who's done a full page, high resolution
color graphics dump, knows that it takes no small amount of time.  Although
we're working on making them more efficient, the routines to fill the rasters
take no time at all.  It's sending them to the printer through the printer
device that's agonizingly slow.  The next version, released probably about
a month after the first, will support screen output.

Thanks for the idea.

Rich Champeaux  (rachamp@MBUNIX.MITRE.ORG)