Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!rutgers!bellcore!jcricket!sjs
From: sjs@jcricket.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: MicroTimes interview with John Warnock of Adobe
Message-ID: <11379@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 28 Oct 88 13:08:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: bellcore.11379
References: <5742@hoptoad.uucp> <4259@adobe.COM> <317@auspex.UUCP>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: sjs@ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer)
Organization: Bellcore
Lines: 63

In article <317@auspex.UUCP> guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes in
response to Glen Reid:
> >All very tricky legal landmines, but I can assure you that Dr. Warnock
> >knows exactly what NeWS is, and I think the important message in
> >between the lines here is that Adobe has a great interest in Sun
> >Microsystems, and would love to see them use our Display PostScript
> >implementation rather than a "clone."
> 
> In other words, you've either extended PostScript to handle input
> devices, or would love to see Sun extend Display PostScript in such a
> fashion so that it *could* replace the current interpreter in NeWS?

This is starting to get interesting.
And here we have ringside seats!

I think it is obvious that a company that is trying to create a
commodity workstation market and a company that makes its money by
selling a line of software will have different vested interests in
areas such as these.  Clearly Sun's position is enhanced and Adobe's
position is somewhat diminished by a product like NeWS.  I don't
see how it could be otherwise.  Too bad.  They're both great products.

Given the current market dynamics, it will never be enough for a
software company to build a great product and sit on it.  A viable
software house will need a continuous stream of new software to keep
ahead of the me-toos and the GNUs of the world (God bless 'em).

(Of course, another approach would be to build a good piece of
software and play a dirty trick on your competitors like licensing it
to them on reasonable terms, thereby gaining the good will of the
industry and the customer base and promoting the development of
standards in the bargain.  Anyone recognize NFS here?  Again, though,
the existance of NFS did a great deal to create the market that Sun
hoped to capture.  Sun could afford to be generous here.)

So, it's a complicated world, but I guess we already knew that.  Back
to the original topic:  Can we expect NeWS and Display PostScript to
converge?

I know a bit about NeWS, and I know a bit about PostScript, but I
haven't found any particularly useful info about Display Postsctipt
(perhaps I'm not looking in the right places).  I do know this: Sun's
NeWS has introduced few gratuitous incompatabilities with Postscript
(and they have been beaten about the head with a wet fish for those
few that they did).  Has Adobe returned the favor?

In particular, does Display PostScript have anything like the
following features?  Have they followed Sun's lead or gone off in a
different direction?

	1) Canvases
	2) Color objects
	3) processes (fork)
	4) monitors
	5) overlays
	6) copyarea
	7) damage
	8) tokenized or compressed input
	9) objects as dictionaries
	10) events and interests

Speaking only for myself,
	Stan Switzer  sjs@ctt.bellcore.com
	"Iron fist Philosophy / Is your life worth a painting?"