Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!texsun!newstop!sun!angel!henry
From: henry@angel.Sun.COM (Henry McGilton--Software Products)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: UltraScript PC with 640K
Summary: Technical PostScript Wanted
Message-ID: <132512@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 5 Mar 90 08:44:45 GMT
References: <9477@imagen.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 148

In article <9477@imagen.UUCP>, ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes:
    *  I would love to answer your questions about USPC.  If
    *  we lived in a free society, I would no doubt be able to
    *  do that.  You seem to have the illusion that this is a
    *  free-access network.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I would have E-mailed this to Ivan Bach, but there seems to
be a problem getting through.  I can't quite understand why
Mr. Bach doesn't have a `real' mail address, but mails from
the daemon account.  It's not my nature to denigrate anyone
publicly.

	Praise People Publicly.  Pillory People Privately.

But, given I can't get through on E-mail,  Mister Bach,
your last posting was somewhat disturbing, from some
minor and some major viewpoints.  The Minor first -- would
you mind using some editor that wraps lines correctly
to eighty characters or fewer, please?  Would make our
lives (a little) easier if you could.

The Major.

    *  This network is being administered by at least five
    *  self-appointed Ministers.  Their names are . . .
    *  ( names deleted to prevent further seiches of the net )
I was under the impression (am I mistaken?) that ad hominem
debates are in poor taste on the net.

I also had no idea that any person or group were acting as self-
appointed arbiters of what's acceptable.  I have enjoyed reading
this newsgroup for quite some time now, have gained reams of
useful information, have been amused, and have been completely
awed by the level of intellect within this group.  And have
learned a lot from the really knowledgeable people -- all
five to ten of them -- who post to this group.

    *  1. Why are Adobe and SUN using a compact, binary format
    *     in Display Post- Script, but only a readable format
    *     in Printer PostScript?
I already responded to this one.  I had no idea that Sun were
supporting DPS.  I can feel Alzheimer's creeping up -- must be
the effects of eight years in the Sun.

    *  2. Why cannot Adobe propose a standard binary format
    *     for Printer Post- Script that could be implemented
    *     in all PostScript interpreters, so that our printer
    *     drivers can produce PostScript programs that would
    *     be up to 10 times shorter than the programs written
    *     in readable format?
I don't know why Adobe can't do this.  Maybe Adobe are busy
doing lots of other groovy things since PostScript has been
such a raving success in the marketplace.  Groovy things
like Illustrator, Streamline, Type Manager, PhotoShop, the
forms generator, a reasonably decent (if somewhat
overpriced) font library (congratulations Adobe, for Adobe
Garamond).  If Adobe aren't presently doing any such
innovation, perhaps some other company (QMS/Imagen,
perhaps?) would like to take a stab at it.  After all,
while Adobe have only one page description language in
their portfolio, Imagen (who have been in existnce a lot
longer than Adobe) already have considerable experience in
designing page description languages (ImPress and DDL, to
name just two).

    *  3. Why don't we improve the user interface programs which
    *     allow you to use PostScript interpreters in
    *     interactive or executive mode, so that they are at
    *     least as good as the programs which allow you to use
    *     a BASIC interpreter interactively?
I admit to guessing at your requirements here, but I think that
you would like to see a much more interactive, debugging kind of
interaction.  Such a facility is possible in principle, but incredibly
hard in practice.  After all, BASIC is trivial compared to 
PostScript.  But, if you have any practical suggestions on how
to build an `incremental' debugging PostScript environment, or
better yet, a prototype implementation we could all use to see how
it is and provide our feedback, I'm sure we'd all be overjoyed
to obtain such a utility.

    *  4. Why don't we improve our application programs in such
    *     a way that they give us full access to the power of
    *     PostScript, so that we do not have to program in
    *     PostScript directly?
Many applications predated PostScript, and so never were
written to exploit the capabilities of a page description
language that wasn't dreamed of at the time they were
written (oops -- tautology, I know).  And a lot of the old
pre-PostScript applications had to be cobbled up in a real
hurry to support PostScript when the writing appeared on
the wall.  Some modern applications (Adobe Illustrator),
and some others whose names escape me at this late hour
(the A problem again) do provide great facilities
such as text around arbitrary paths and so on.  But, I
think that ultimately, (guessing again at your desires)
descriptive systems can't, by definition, describe every
possible thing that a procedural system can execute.  Just
recently, for example, I wrote a quick and dirty PostScript
program (twenty lines or so) to provide the effect of
stone-cut letters.  I don't have a WYSIWYG program with
which I can describe such a thing so succinctly.

    *  Not only did I not get an answer from, for example, Glenn
    *  Reid, the person who managed to write a whole book on how
    *  to make PostScript printer drivers more efficient without
    *  ever mentioning the compact, binary format used in other
    *  languages, such as Interpress or DDL, but:
Why did you expect an answer from Glenn Reid?  I was under
the (possibly mistaken) impression that Glenn was writing a
book about PostScript.  Assuming my notion of Glenn's
chosen subject matter was correct, why would he have
written about InterPress or DDL?  As I stated in a previous
posting, I don't see a lot (in fact, I don't see any at
all) of street corner shops advertising `InterPress Spoken
Here'.  Same problem for DDL.  Same for ImPress (RIP [no
pun intended]).  If I look in my net news comp/lang
directory, I see postscript, but I don't see interpress, or
ddl, or impress, or hpgl, or xics, or, name one, and it's
not there.

    *  . . .  Some Glop Deleted . . .

    *  3. My technical comments were called "bashing and haranguing."
I posted the article with the `anti-bashing' title
originally.  It was not directed at any one person, but was
a philosophical comment on the notion that Adobe have
provided the world with something useful, and that many
people seem to have adopted a position that Adobe were
somehow `in control, and that if people disagreed with
Adobes' execution, that such people should build something
that they considered better and sell it in the free marketplace.

My position as I stated in my posting of a week ago still
stands.  You, Mr. Bach, for example, have stated some
interesting and fairly good ideas, now and then.  Well,
why don't you go ahead and implement some of your good
ideas?  An interactive, incremental, debugging PS
environment (running on what platform?, I hear the cry)
would be a boon.  Shouldn't be too hard -- about the same
level of complexity as an APL interpreter, plus colour
extensions of course.

	........  Henry

| Henry McGilton    | I'll bet those people who |                           |
| Sun Microsystems  | put control-D characters  | arpa: hmcgilton@sun.com   |
| 2550 Garcia       | in PostScript files also  | uucp: ...!sun!angel!henry |
| Mountain View, CA | put beans in their chili. |                           |