laser-lovers@uw-beaver (06/25/85)
From: Richard Furuta <Furuta@WASHINGTON.arpa> This press release recently came my way. It seems that it is of sufficient interest that I am forwarding it to the list. --Rick ---------------------------------------------------------------- Nineteen Companies Plan to Use Common Printing Standard for Computers NEW YORK, June 24 -- Nineteen companies today announced their intention to use the Interpress page-description language as a common electronic printing standard for computers. Xerox Corporation, Stamford, Conn.; Burroughs Corporation, Detroit, Mich.; Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Mass.; Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, Munich, West Germany; Dataproducts Corporation, Woodland Hills, Calif.; Intergraph Corporation, Huntsville, Ala.; and Oce van der Grinten N.V., Venlo, The Netherlands were among the 19 companies making the announcement. Other companies include Advanced Computer Communications, Santa Barbara, Calif.; The Exponential Corporation, Wellesley, Mass.; Genicom Corporation, Waynesboro, Va.; IMAGEN Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif.; Interleaf, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.; OASYS (Office Automation Systems, Inc.), San Diego, Calif.; PERQ Systems Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Raster Graphics Inc., Mt. Kisco, N.Y.; Studio Software Corporation, Irvine, Calif.; Texet Corporation, Arlington, Mass.; Unilogic Ltd., Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Xyvision, Inc., Woburn, Mass. By implementing a common printing standard, these companies are working to ensure that documents created on a variety of computers can be printed on many different types of output devices, such as laser printers or typesetters. "Adopting a common print standard is a major step towards ensuring compatibility among a wide variety of equipment. It frees the end user from the need to develop or obtain special software, or to know about the special characteristics of a particular printer," said Jerome Elkind, Xerox vice president of system integration. Interpress has been used by Xerox for its line of office automation and electronic printing equipment since 1982. Xerox has already implemented Interpress on more than 20 of the company's workstations, laser printers and output devices that span a wide range of cost and performance. Many computer users currently face the problem of integrating equipment from different vendors so that documents created on one system can be printed on another. For example, users often find that their workstations cannot print documents on a desired printer without special translation programs. Interpress was designed to take advantage of the capabilities of today's laser printing technology for high-resolution text and graphics. The range of applications for Interpress includes computer listings, word processing output, graphic output, phototypesetting, presentations and high-quality publishing. "Interpress is device-independent, which means that its representation of a document does not depend on the details of the printer," said Elkind. "Thus, it can be used to interface virtually any type of document creation device to virtually any type of document printing device." Interpress is a versatile language for describing and manipulating the pages to be printed. It has commands for describing text, graphics and pictures, as well as commands for creating various shapes and rotating and scaling them. Interpress can describe complex documents that include multiple fonts, line and shaded graphics, halftones and continuous tone images. Fonts in Interpress may be either in their outline representation to permit flexibility in size and orientation, or in bit-map representation for high-quality resolution and rapid throughput. In addition to instructions about the page image, the Interpress specification includes instructions about the assembling and finishing of a document. Interpress instructions regarding the number of documents to be printed, for example, are useful in a production printing environment where multiple copies are the rule. Interpress enables high-performance printing for complex as well as simple pages, and it works economically with both low- and high-speed printers. For example, the Xerox 9700 electronic printing system decomposes a complete Interpress description of a page and prints it at up to 120 pages per minute. Also well-suited for commercial production printing applications, Interpress includes utility programs to merge different parts of a document, such as text and illustrations, into a single document. It can also create signatures, such as two-up signatures or 16-page signatures, commonly used in the printing industry. The company also announced today that Interpress masters will be created by the host-based software, called Xerox Interpress Transform Architecture (XITA), components of which will begin to be released in the fourth quarter of 1986. Using the XITA tools, companies and third-party software developers will be able to interface data streams from many host printing achitectures, including IBM's Advanced Function Printing Architecture (AFPA), to printers using Interpress. Xerox made public a complete description of Interpress in April 1984. Since that announcement, more than 100 organizations have indicated their interest in implementing Interpress. Xerox said it will aid companies interested in implementing Interpress. This assistance includes implementation aids, the first of which is a conversion utility which can transform the popular Troff format used with Unix operating systems to the Interpress format. Other assistance includes debugging tools, sample implementations and consulting services. Xerox also announced that its Raster Encoding Standard and its Print Service Integration Standard, which are application-level protocols, are now publicly available. The Raster Encoding Standard describes a digital representation for interchanging raster images, such as those created by scanning devices or software that generates raster output. The Print Service Integration Standard contains detailed specifications required to achieve full compatibility between document creation devices and Xerox electronic printing systems. To promote implementations on both workstations and printers, Xerox does not charge license fees or royalties for the use of Interpress. The set of documents describing Interpress is available for $50. A set of 12 documents specifying both Interpress and the rest of the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) architecture is available for $250. These documents and information on Interpress may be obtained from Dennis Frahmann, Xerox Corporation, 2100 Geng Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303; telephone (415) 496-6088 . Press contact: Barry Sulpor, Xerox Corporation, (213) 536-9187 ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------