Xref: utzoo comp.windows.news:1032 comp.lang.postscript:1335 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!tank!ncar!ico!rcd From: rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news,comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: NeWS and DPS, who wins? Summary: the blame (if any) is not clear Message-ID: <13061@ico.ISC.COM> Date: 23 Dec 88 00:19:58 GMT References: <926@cmx.npac.syr.edu> Organization: Interactive Systems Corp, Boulder, CO Lines: 117 In article <926@cmx.npac.syr.edu>, krempel@cmx.npac.syr.edu (Henry BJ Krempel) writes: > This is another perfect example of the inherent contradiction that > exists when a "standard" is created and maintained by a commercial > organisation. Why is there an inherent contradiction? Is it really worse to have standards administered by an organization which really cares about the standard (as the basis for its raison d'etre) than to hand them off to some organization whose primary purpose is simply the cranking out of standards? Standards organizations often draw the membership of a group for technical development of a particular standard from organizations which want to control an evolving standard to capture market--whatever the cost to the standard itself. Some members of standards committees are sent because it gets them out of the office and out of the way! I've sat in on fortunately few real standards meetings, but enough to disgust me with the bureaucratic non-commercial standards process. A commercially-maintained standard may have different problems, but I hardly think it will turn out any worse. > The "standard" PostScript is missing a few key features to make it > useful to drive a display... I'm sure Adobe was aware of this...but at the point they released PostScript, they weren't aiming at displays, and the hardware horsepower for PostScript on displays wasn't widely enough available back then. >...Sun has put time and effort into the > product that first made screen PostScript possible: NeWS. After Sun > was through with the "feasibility study," Adobe decided that screen > PostScript was interesting and solved these problems again, in a new > and incompatible manner... Is there any reason to think that Adobe wasn't working on PostScript for displays? Remember that SunDEW (the precursor to NeWS) first really popped to the surface in early '86, and it was nowhere near to being a product at that point (at least by its author's claims). NeWS really happened in '87, and Display PostScript in '88. The results (NeWS and DPS) are different at a very fundamental, conceptual level. If you try to look at Sun's work as any sort of precursor to Adobe's, you have to wonder why they're so different! They sure look like two independent developments. > Adobe feels that it is in its' best interest to create an incompatible > system,... Did you get this from talking to Adobe? I'd be surprised. I'm not naive; I know that companies DO introduce incompatibilities for the sake of profit and market share, but I see no evidence that it's going on here. I think it's reckless to attribute that sort of motive without good reason. >...and this may unfortunately seem to be true, with possible > license fees coming in for systems running under both X and NeWS. But now you're getting closer to the point that makes all your carping about Adobe seem questionable: Sun apparently wanted something with PostScript-like capabilities wired in to a particular window system, and they built it. Adobe has decided (wisely for them, from a marketing standpoint) that they don't want to choose sides in the window-system war, so they're building something intended to work with more than one window system. Why don't you criticize Sun for building their own window system instead of working with X? After all, isn't NeWS a way for Sun to create gratuitous incompatibilities to try to lock people into their products? In fact, in a sense it is, although it's nothing so malicious, and I think that Sun has good, sound reasons for pushing NeWS instead of giving in to X. (I'm just trying to point out that you could be criticizing Sun as well as Adobe.) An even better question is why Sun and Adobe didn't try to get together and work things out... > If Sun creates a Display PostScript compatibility mode, Adobe will > continually create new incompatible undocumented features, with Sun > development continually in Catch-Up mode... Adobe has been pretty good about documenting just what PostScript is and sticking to it (with the obvious exception of the internal mechanisms which they use to protect their software and fonts). But of course they're going to keep developing it...Are you saying that Adobe should stop doing development on PostScript? Are they the "bad guys" for **enhancing their own product**?? Come on now. >...This is the old dilemma > between open and proprietary systems, and this is the way it was in > the bad old days... Open systems are a myth. Regarding your reference to AT&T (the "right choice" reference), just because AT&T has fumbled repeatedly doesn't mean that OSF will do it all right. Your enemy's enemy is *not* necessarily your friend (in the healthy-paranoia view of the world:-). Just because you (obviously) favor NeWS doesn't mean that Adobe is evil. There are problems with proprietary standards. There are also problems with "open" standards. > Who will win "the fight"?... What fight? Are you saying that an evolving product in a new market should simply spring, full-grown and uncontested, from one organization? It's not a fight so much as it is a development. There must be conflicting views! If it were obvious how it should be done, it would have been done long ago. >...I don't know, but I know that with things > the way they are, we all lose... Wrong-o. Welcome to the world of development. We get to choose. With Sun and Adobe both being formidable companies, and both having put out credible products, we get to try them. If either NeWS *or* DPS had taken hold completely right away, we'd be a lot more likely to be stuck with mistakes. Competitive pressures can get things fixed. Yes, there will be problems and more work than may seem necessary, until the dust settles. -- Dick Dunn UUCP: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...Worst-case analysis must never begin with "No one would ever want..."