Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!jarthur!uunet!tnc!m0154
From: m0154@tnc.UUCP (GUY GARNETT)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: Intuition Image structure rendering utilities
Keywords: rendered intuition image PostScript IFF
Message-ID: <777@tnc.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 91 22:18:54 GMT
References: <1214@muleshoe.cs.utexas.edu> <768@tnc.UUCP> <1991Mar26.154335.16403@fwi.uva.nl> <270@atacama.cs.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: m0154@tnc.UUCP (GUY GARNETT)
Organization: The Next Challenge, Fairfax, Va.
Lines: 40


When I proposed extending the conversions utility, I was thinking
about a couple of things.  One is that such a utility would be useful
not only for graphics, but also for other data formats.  I agree that
the number should be limited to something "reasonable", and not all
conversions are possible (it does not make any sense to try to convert
audio data to anything but an IFF sound format, for example).  One
conversions facility could manage all of this activity, supplied with
the proper conversion modules.

One of the other things I was thinking about was the case of
relatively high-end packages which are sending their ouptut to
something other than a Preferences printer driver.  In such case
getting the data converted into PostScript (the usual language of
choice for high-quality printed output) is much more desirable.  For
example, you have a CAD drawing which is embedded in the document. 
For display on screen, the conversions utility is used to render it to
an Image (or whatever else is appropriate) at the proper scale for
screen display.  When the time comes to print that, instead of
printing the raster image (which will either consume oodles and oodles
of RAM as the converter tries to render it to a huge bitmap at 300
pixels per inch, or will look horrible as postscript scales the bitmap
up by a factor of four or so) it would be very desirable to  have
another module to convert it to encapsulated postscript, to be sent to
the printer along with the rest of the page.

Similarly, when converting a wordprocessor's save file into a DTP
application, the user may want to be able to treat it as text, rather
than as a graphic image.  Such a conversion module should be
relatively easy to write, and should require almost no additional
overhead in the conversions utility itself.  This way, non-graphic
files can be converted into useful non-graphic formats.

The trick will be to define the set of supported conversions properly,
to get the maximum utility out of the thing.  Output formats we should
at least consider are: Bitmapped Graphics (including Image and IFF),
Structured Graphics (2D and 3D), Text (including plain ASCII), and
PostScript.

Wildstar