Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!kchen
From: kchen@Apple.COM (Kok Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: other page description languages
Message-ID: <53324@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 25 May 91 01:53:21 GMT
References: <1538@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> <1991May24.044839.9063@chinacat.unicom.com>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 41

woody@chinacat.unicom.com (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) writes:

>In article <1538@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> arnold@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gregory Arnold) writes:
>>Hi,
>>	I'm taking a summer course that deals with the postscript language.
>>One of the requirements of this course is a paper that compares postscript to
>>other page description languages.  Would some kind soul please give me some

>Well, there is the pre-cursor to Postscript, IMPRESS.
>There is Kyocera's printer controller language, and there is QUICK. (a QMS
>Printer language).  These are all "Page description" languages of
>a sort, but with the exeption of IMPRESS fall well short of anything
>that Postscript can do.
>Cheers
>Woody


Oh boy, Woody, LT-P would be proud of you! :-) :-)  (Alright, 
alright, there is *no* hyphen between the T and the P :-)

imPRESS is not a PDL in the spirit of PostScript but a set of 
instructions for setting text and graphics, in the spirit of PCL 
and QUIC.  Granted, the graphical features are more pleasing 
than PCL or QUIC, but it is nevertheless of a different class than 
a full-fledge language as PostScript.  Afterall, is it meaningful 
to compare Smalltalk against the 7094 Assembler language?

Perhaps Woody is confusing imPRESS with the stillborn DDL from 
Imagen.  

Mr. Arnold is probably better off comparing PostScript against
Interpress.  A simple introduction is available as

   Steven Harrington, Buckley, R., "Interpress, The Source Book,"
   Brady, New York, 1988.  ISBN 0-13-475591-X.


Regards,

Kok Chen, AA6TY				kchen@apple.com
Apple Computer, Inc.