Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!morganucodon.cis.ohio-state.edu!jgreely From: jgreely@morganucodon.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Postscript previewer under X Message-ID: Date: 5 Oct 90 09:45:56 GMT References: <655046250@ <22700017@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: J Greely Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 41 In-reply-to: phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu's message of 4 Oct 90 21:14:00 GMT In article <22700017@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >1. Ability to override the pixel size relationship, so that I can see what > actual dots would be plotted on my 300dpi printer instead of what has to > be plotted on my 75dpi (or whatever) X terminal. Since this would result > in magnification of the image, the window should be a port to a virtual > window with H and V scrollbars. Pageview (supplied with OpenWindows 2.0) does this nicely, although it won't show you the results of 300dpi halftoning. It would be a fairly trivial modification if you had the source, although it shouldn't be the default. >2. Both forward AND BACKWARD page buttons, to go between different pages. > Bitmaps of previous pages should be kept to some specifiable maximum. This is only reasonable if the PostScript document conforms to the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions (and it's still not easy unless they interpret it in a nice way :-)). Making the bitmap-caching scheme work on arbitrary PS would require a healthy, loving relationship between the interpreter and the user interface (offhand, the only interpreters I know of that are mature enough for this are Display PostScript and NeWS). >3. An option to tell the previewer to watch for the .ps file to be updated, > and rerun it when it is, automatically. Ick. How will it know when the updating process is finished? For something like a DVI converter, it could take several minutes to completely update the file, and if I'm currently looking at page thirty when the previewer notices that the file has been overwritten by the first 4K of the new version, I'll be very unhappy. Your other idea (having the previewer run one or more programs that produce a PostScript file to use as input) is more practical. > A rerun button should be there in either case. ... It would be > nice to be able to have an edit window Pageview does both of these, although the editor is a bit primitive. -- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)