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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: RE: NeWS and DPS
Message-ID: <6139@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 1 Jan 89 01:55:46 GMT
References: <66472@ti-csl.CSNET>
Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco
Lines: 28

After reading much of the DPS preliminary manual, my evaluation of the
situation is that Adobe has largely reimplemented NeWS, but changed all
the names of everything so that applications will not port between them.

Clearly there are design differences in spots, and Adobe has made some
performance hacks at the language level, where Sun didn't feel the
need; but there is a strong fundamental similarity of design.

Why Adobe chose to change all the names is less clear.  Possibly a
straight case of NIH (not invented here) combined with pretensions of
control of the language.  Possibly they, or their major customers DEC
and NeXT, deliberately wanted to fragment the market to reduce its
openness (ability of customers to move to competitors' equipment
without breaking their software).  I doubt DEC would shed a tear if
PostScript on screens never quite took off, since that would leave
their inferior X window system winner by default.

What to do about it has me torn.  In some ways I think Sun and other
NeWS vendors (like me) should move to the DPS names, providing a
compatability package for old NeWS applications.  In other ways I think
the NeWS community should thumb its nose at Adobe, let them remain
incompatible, and beat them fair and square in the market instead.  If
they get away with making us play catch-up this time, they'll repeat it
forever -- the standard IBM-style Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt game.
-- 
John Gilmore    {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu    gnu@toad.com
Love your country but never trust its government.
		     -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania