Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!shuksan!tahoma!hrsw2!bakken
From: bakken@hrsw2.UUCP (David E. Bakken)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal (IFF QuickDraw)
Message-ID: <85@hrsw2.UUCP>
Date: 19 May 88 21:07:30 GMT
References: <5967@well.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Commercial Aircraft Co., Seattle, Wa.
Lines: 50

In article <5967@well.UUCP>, ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
> Here's some concrete minuses for PostScript:
I'm certainly no PostScript expert or evangalist, but I'd like to
respond to a few of Leo's points.

> 	o It's not public domain.
	That's  an interesting question - see the thread in
comp.lang.postscript from March if you still have it around.  People
have been complaining about Adobe's practices.  The most interesting
point I saw made on that was from message <4240@hoptoad.uucp> (25 Mar 88)
}} However, in the prospectus from their public stock offerring of
}} August 13, 1987, they said, "Since one of the company's goals is to
}} promote the PostScript language as a standard for the representation of
}} the printed page, the company placed the PostScript language in the
}} public domain and the company therefore derives no revenue from the use
}} of the PostScript language by third parties."

> 	o Adobe charges what I understand to be a hefty licensing fee for
> 	  the use of PostScript in any product.
I've read that the cost of licensing PostScript and adding the extra 
computational horsepower to deal with it adds $2K to the price of
a laser printer.  But at the GNU BOF at February's
Dallas USENIX Len Tower (I think that was his name) mentioned something
about a postscript interpreter.  That would be really nice as it shouldn't
be that hard to write a back end to the postscript-bitmap for an Epson
compatible or even an HP Deskjet or Paintjet.

> 	o PostScript, from what I understand, doesn't know about color yet.
Yes it does, and I understand it has from the beginning.  The
command is setrgbcolor.

> 	o Adobe is coming out with something called "Display PostScript".
> 	  This implies that Display PostScript and vanilla PostScript found
> 	  in laser printers aren't quite the same thing.  We want something
> 	  that works the same on all output devices.
Its my understanding that Display Postscript is Adobe's answer to NeWS.
It is a PostScript interpreter and will be used by many vendors that
offer The X Window System and I think also by Steve Jobs' NEXT.  The
people I have talked to that are very knowledgable with both NeWS and
X like NeWS better because it is a much more complete windowing
environment.  And this seems to be the general (although certainly
nowhere near unanimous) sentiment that has come out of the
"X vs NeWS" wars in the appropriate newsgroups.

Yes, PostScript is slow.
-- 
Dave Bakken   Boeing Commercial Airplanes		(206) 277-2571
uw-beaver!apcisea!hrsw2!bakken
Disclaimer: These are my own views, not those of my employers.  Don't
let them deter you from buying the 747 you've been saving hard for.