Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: 7 vits vs. 8 bits (again)
Message-ID: <1990Jul3.173300.6547@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <2414@acorn.co.uk> <1990Jun23.184530.1326@cbnewsl.att.com> <184@heaven.woodside.ca.us> <1363@chinacat.Unicom.COM> <1990Jun27.201333.10418@utzoo.uucp> <3439@adobe.UUCP> <268C0233.50F0@intercon.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 17:33:00 GMT

In article <268C0233.50F0@intercon.com> amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>Personally, I always thought that Apple LocalTalk was an excellent choice.
>The biggest problem with it is that nothing much speaks it except Macintoshen
>and PCs...

The biggest problem with it is that it's not available over the RS232 port.
People would have written software to speak the printer protocol, whatever
it was, but having to add funny new hardware just to talk to the printer
was a much bigger obstacle.

>Unfortunately, though, async serial is the lowest common denominator.  As
>soon as you layer a protocol on top of it, though, both sides have to speak
>it, which would defeat Woody and others who want to convince the host that
>it's talking to a Brand Y printer.

There's nothing wrong with having a dumb-serial protocol available for
people with Brand-Y constraints.  That does not preclude having something
better too.
-- 
"Either NFS must be scrapped or NFS    | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
must be changed."  -John K. Ousterhout |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry