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From: majka@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Marc Majka)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.graphics
Subject: Re: postscript routines for plotting
Message-ID: <4357@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 21 Oct 88 22:41:23 GMT
References: <31190@bbn.COM>
Sender: nobody@ubc-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: majka@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Marc Majka)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 16

In article <31190@bbn.COM> jzavgren@bbn.com (John Zavgren) writes:
>I beleive [sic] the way to go is PostScript. After all, all our printing is
>done on PostScript printers. So, we might as well eliminate as many
>intermediate steps as possible. [...]

PostScript is an adequate page description language.  It is a poor graphical
description language.  Sure, all your printers understand PostScript, but
printers are hardly the only kind of graphic output devices.  Producing good
graphics in PostScript is, frankly, a pain in the butt.  As the fledgling
"industry" of desktop publishing grows up, it will begin to discover that
there are more exciting graphical concepts than those offered by PostScript.
Expect either a new page description language to replace PostScript, or big
changes in the graphics it offers.  Writing PostScript-based graphics
utilities will get you two things: soon-outdated software, and lousy graphics.

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Marc Majka