Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!vdsvax!barnett
From: barnett@vdsvax.crd.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Why No Adobe Host-Base Interpreters?
Message-ID: <14508@vdsvax.crd.ge.com>
Date: 22 Oct 90 15:12:40 GMT
References: <34733@cup.portal.com> <1990Oct11.173733.14781@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 46

In article <1990Oct11.173733.14781@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
|In article <34733@cup.portal.com> schuster@cup.portal.com (Michael Alan Schuster) writes:
|>With Adobe finally licensing (and producing) direct-market interpreters
|>for the HP printers, why don;t they do in the host-based clones (like
|>Freedom of Press, UltraScript, Goscript, etc. etc) by producing one of
|>their own...

|One reason why they might legitimately hesitate to do this is the copying
|problem.  There are great practical advantages to selling interpreters
|that are imbedded in a piece of hardware, because it makes them much
|more difficult to pirate.


I don't *quite* buy this argument. Adobe sells software anyway. (e.g.
ATM. Illustrator.) 

Let me ask a related question. 

Illustrator can render a PostScript illustration to the screen. I
don't know if it could render ANY postscript file currently, but it
could if Adobe wanted it to.

Why can't Illustrator be used to print a PostScript file on a
non-PostScript device? (It doesn't).

This really bugs me. When I want a hardcopy, ATM works great with any
Macintosh program, *except* Illustrator, (I have Illustrator 1.9.3 ).


I have a 200 dpi quickdraw printer, and I have to use Freedom of
Press to print an Illustrator document. :-(

Illustrator *could* render an image and transfer a high resolution bitmap out.
Instead, it just gives you a screen dump at a lousy 72 dpi.

I think Adobe is missing out on a market here. If Illustrator could be
used as a host based PostScript interpreter, Adobe would sell a lot
more copies. The software has to be more profitable than the hardware.
Yes, pirate copies will exist. They exist now. But think of the
leverage Adobe would get if you had to use Illustrator to print a
PageMaker document!


-- 
	Bruce G. Barnett 	barnett@ge-crd.ARPA, barnett@steinmetz.ge.com
				uunet!steinmetz!barnett