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From: captkidd@athena.mit.edu (Ivan Cavero Belaunde)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: System 7.0 Q & A
Message-ID: <11432@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 14 May 89 22:50:10 GMT
References: <30353@apple.Apple.COM> <4666@okstate.UUCP> <1787@internal.Apple.COM> <23868@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <30544@apple.Apple.COM> <23908@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
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Reply-To: captkidd@athena.mit.edu (Ivan Cavero Belaunde)
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In article <23908@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> lange@cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) writes:
>It seems like Apple is going to a lot of trouble to build features in
>Quickdraw that are already handled by Display Postscript, and taking a
>a *long* time to do it.
>Why does Apple insist on re-inventing the wheel?  Adobe can't be charging
>*that* much for Postscript.  (If they are simply charging too much, then
>they would seem to be shooting themselves in the foot).
>So why doesn't Apple, like NeXT, use Display Postscript?

Apple doesn't use DP because they abhor being dependent on "foreign"
technology.  PostScript they keep because they needed a page-description
language for the LW when it came out, they didn't have time to write
one themselves, and now they've helped (significantly) to establish it
as the standard page description language.

However, as I understand it, Apple is very reticent in letting their
system software (which as you can tell from the lawsuits, they guard
and defend like gold) be dependent on outside technology.  Another of the
issues involved is that if Apple were to use DP, the Mac's
performance would suffer significantly (I've heard DP mentioned as the big
MIPS-eater in the Next, and a key reason for Mathematica running faster
on the 16MHz Mac II than on the 25MHz cube).

QuickDraw, on the other hand, has been extensively optimized for the
Mac hardware; Apple has people that know the QuickDraw code very well,
and can have them optimize and expand on software they know instead of
having to have them figure out how to optimize DP for the Mac.

Besides, using DP would probably break a lot of software, and it would
open a whole new can of worms with people attempting to clone the Mac
(since the basic display stechnology behind the interface is not Apple's
anyhmore, but Adobe).  Ugly, ugly, ugly as far as Apple's concerned.  It
might not necessarily be the best for the user (although I think their
decision *is* the way to go), but it is the best decision for them as
a company, and that's where it's at.

Like people have said before, (with smileys) 4.5 MIPS out of the 5 in the
NeXT get swallowed by DP :-)

>Trent Lange

-Ivan Cavero Belaunde

	"An MIT surveyor once found the gates of Hell
	He looked the devil in the eye and said "You're looking well,"
	The devil looked right back at him, and said "Why visit me -
	You've been through Hell already; you went to MIT!""
		-The MIT Engineers' Drinking Song

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