Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!sun-barr!decwrl!adobe!greid
From: greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: %%BoundingBox: statement
Keywords: Document Structure spec, Adobe Illustrator
Message-ID: <1131@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 89 15:05:14 GMT
References: <3377@daisy.UUCP> <1120@adobe.UUCP> <3960@phri.UUCP>
Sender: news@adobe.COM
Reply-To: greid@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid)
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
Lines: 59

In article <3960@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>	Sorry Glenn, but that's a cop-out.  Adobe has always seems like a
>pretty right-kind of company, but statements like the above really get me
>going.  As far as the outside world is concerned, Adobe designed the
>convention and Adobe wrote Illustrator, i.e. they are an atomic entity.
>	So, admit that it's a bug (which, if I read you right, you have
>already done) and send out updates to everybody who bought copies of the
>original program.  One of the reasons I buy software from Adobe is because
>I have faith that if anybody can get PostScript-related stuff right, Adobe
>can.  Don't let that faith down.  Come back into the fold, Glenn.

Sheesh.  Here are some excerpts from the original posting and from
my reply:

>>     However, I have several Adobe Illustrator v1.6 documents that
>>     use floating point number in the BoundingBox statement.
>>     
>>     Is my document outdated?  Or is it a bug in Illustrator?
>     
> This is a bug in Illustrator.  I'm not sure whether it's been fixed
> yet, but they know about it in the Illustrator group.

You said "f I have read you right, you have already done."  How many
ways are there to read the sentence "This is a bug in Illustrator."

>>    If the people who designed the convention do not follow it, how much
>>    can we count on the spec?
> 
> Unfortunately, the people who designed the convention are not the
> people who wrote Illustrator.  The application product teams at
> Adobe are just another developer, in a sense, and they have to
> interpret the specs like everybody else.  That doesn't mean that
> the specification should be held under suspicion, I don't think.

There were two questions asked by the original poster, I think:

	1.  Is this a bug? [Yes]
	2.  Does this mean we should not trust the spec?

I addressed those two questions.  The reason I pointed out that there
were different teams working on Illustrator and the structuring
conventions is because it's true, and it contributed to the presence
of the bug in Illustrator.  This is the real world, guys.  We
acknowledge the bug, I said that I knew the Illustrator team knew
about it (and were fixing it, but I didn't know the particulars).
Since the original poster found problems in version 1.6 and we are
currently shipping 1.8 (at least), I imagine the problem is already
fixed and our customers have been shipped the updates.

Either I had a bad day and it wasn't clear that my explanation was
not a cop-out but an explanation of why there might be a bug in 
Illustrator, or you had a bad day and decided to give me a hard
time about it.

Sorry about my sour tone, but "statements like the above really get me
going."  Come back into the fold, indeed.

Glenn Reid
Adobe Systems