Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!rpp386!woody
From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: PostScript -- Stop Bashing Adobe
Summary: ddl
Message-ID: <18053@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 28 Feb 90 13:06:17 GMT
References: <9460@imagen.UUCP>
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Plano, TX
Lines: 49

In article <9460@imagen.UUCP>, ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes:
> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
> 
> 
> I completely agree with you.  I am discussing very important technical aspects
> of the PostScript language, and proposing substantial improvements to that
> language.  What are you doing Dick?  What is your contribution to this discussion?
> Nobody but Apple and Adobe had a say in what the new world standard for storing
> and transmitting image data should look like, and how it should be implemented.
> You are now telling us that even after this flawed standard has been accepted by
> people who know very little about programming languages and the theory of
> information, nobody should be allowed to discuss PostScript's deficiencies.  Your
> comments do not reek of America.  They reek of Russia before Gorbachev.
> 
Well ssaid.
> to do everything that can be done in PostScript, and more.  For example, you can 
> specify a complex document layout for signature printing on top of page 

hmmmm...  They ARE similar, but I think that the statement above is not
quite true.  I don't think that DDL is anyways close to the power of a
general purpose language, such as postscript has.  I seem to remember that
DDL is not really a programming language, more of a printer controller.
I have not used DDL extensivly.  HP was trying to keep it to proprietary
when they were considering it, and no matter how I tried, I could not
get any documentation on the language.  So I may be all wet behind the
ears in regard to ddl. 

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> descriptions.  I was not involved in the design of DDL.  After several years of
> using both DDL and PostScript, I have come to the conclusion that both languages
> have certain deficiencies which should be corrected in future document description
> languages.  Tremendous advances in the power of hardware should be used to develop
> a new, object-oriented document description language that would be much more
> powerful, much easier to use, much easier to debug, and much more difficult to 
> implement than either PostScript or DDL.  We could design such a language in this 
> newsgroup if you would only let us do that.
> 
> Ivan N. Bach                      Tel (408) 986-9400, x508
> QMS, Inc.                         Fax (408) 727-3725 
> 2650 San Tomas Expressway         arpa: ib@imagen.com 
> Santa Clara, CA 95051             uucp: decwrl!imagen!ib