Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!decwrl!adobe!heaven!glenn
From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: How about another newsgroup?
Summary: new newsgroup?
Message-ID: <150@heaven.woodside.ca.us>
Date: 28 Feb 90 00:55:10 GMT
References: <132223@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1032@abvax.UUCP> <1990Feb27.045623.20591@ico.isc.com>
Reply-To: glenn@heaven.UUCP (Glenn Reid)
Organization: Skyline Press, Woodside CA
Lines: 63

In article <1990Feb27.045623.20591@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
>I'm tired of having the newsgroup overrun by the whining and the flaming.
>Sensible criticism would be useful, but the sort of criticism we've seen in
>the newsgroup in the past few months shows *no* understanding of language
>design, engineering tradeoffs, logical structure, consistency, or human
>engineering (to name a few) - all concepts which Adobe *did* consider.
>Nor have I seen anyone show even a plausible fragment of a replacement or
>competitor for PostScript.  It's *just* noise, and it's rude to keep
>dumping nontechnical crap into a (formerly) technical newsgroup.

I agree with this.  After all, the "comp.lang" tree of the newsgroup
hierarchy is intended for technical discussions of computer languages.

The fact is, PostScript is a pretty big "user phenomenon", too, since
people need to solve all sorts of other software shortcomings by using
PostScript as the interoperability component.  This is great, of course,
but between those discussions ("How can I print my Mac document from 
my Foo system?") to specific printer questions and product information,
this newsgroup has served another purpose which might be characterized
by "misc.consumer.postscript".

I'm not trying to flame, but to point out that there are really two
completely different needs that are being addressed by one newsgroup,
since it's the only one with "postscript" in its name.

Given that essentially all the major computer vendors, including IBM,
DEC, Apple, Wang, HP, TI, Sun (to a certain extent), Apollo, and quite
a few others, offer PostScript products, this is hardly a minor subject,
and I think perhaps a second, consumer/user/product oriented newsgroup
might deserve some consideration.  If nothing else, it would provide
an excellent forum for those of us who have to actually get work done
with PostScript to share ideas about how to make things work.

I have a very limited news feed that doesn't support news.group or
whatever the official forum is for discussing new newsgroups, but we
can bat it around in here for a while, and if there is enough interest,
maybe somebody could take some formal steps, whatever they are.

Taking a quick look at the official list of newsgroups, it looks like
we would want to keep the "comp" prefix, since it's pretty squarely
related to computers.  Although the "comp.sys" sub-tree is devoted
to individual systems, what I am proposing is actually pretty strongly
related to systems issues, but cross-platform issues, to a large degree.

Here is a proposed name and charter:

comp.sys.postscript:
	For discussing system-related issues surrounding use of the
	PostScript language, including printing, moving documents
	from one system to another, PostScript products, printers,
	graphics, 7-bit vs. 8-bit issues, network compatibility,
	command-F, etc.  Also for discussions about the PostScript
	business world, political issues, standardization, and for
	flaming Adobe Systems :-)

Maybe I'm crazy about this.  Maybe it would just cause this group to
dry up and blow away, but somehow I don't think so.  I think there are
lots of us out here who actually like to program in PostScript, and
who may not be concerned with parallel interfaces to particular machines.

What do the rest of you think?

Glenn Reid