Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer Subject: Re: Hyper Functionality [was Re: An Amiga Conversion Facility (2 of 3) LONG!] Message-ID: Date: 18 Apr 91 19:01:10 GMT References: <2407@swrinde.nde.swri.edu> <1991Apr18.065847.8050@agate.berkeley.edu> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 45 In-Reply-To: pete@violet.berkeley.edu's message of Thu, 18 Apr 1991 06:58:47 GMT In article <1991Apr18.065847.8050@agate.berkeley.edu> pete@violet.berkeley.edu (Pete Goodeve) writes: [I'm posting this for Dave Navas, whose news server happens to be down... -- Pete -- ] In article kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) writes: > >Where does it exist? What exists that allows me to programmatically >pass a pointer, etc. to a bitmap in a message & get an encapsulated >Postscript file as a result? Or a set of DR2D commands & get it >rendered, or get the Postscript output of an IFF bitmap file? And have >the server automatically loaded and purged when no longer needed? > >I need an extensible client/server mechanism like this & I sure haven't >seen it anywhere. Remember the recent "Renderer" thread? I see it and >this "A Conversion Utility for the Amiga" to be the same thing, as they >address the same problems. I absolutely positively don't want this thread to die. :) As far as I am concerned this is the extensibility that ARexx promised, but which is really beyond the means for it to deliver. I disagree. I think ARexx can deliver this kind of functionality. There are two catches: 1) someone's got to write the clients; 2) someone needs to do the integration. Examples: I've added a spelling checker and a thesaurus to mg. Someone wrote the servers (ISpell + it's Rexx port, and the Electric Thesaurus), and I did the integration. I can see ADPro doing the bitmap/postscript mappings Kent talked about. I can even get the server automatically loaded & purged as it's needed - it's just that _somebody_ has to write the scripts that do this for your application. Whether you actually want that to happen is another question (I normally don't - I want the server running until I'm through with it).