JAJZ801@CALSTATE.BITNET ("Jeff Sicherman,CSU Long Beach") (08/25/90)
I submitted this suggestion at least once before but didnt see any
reply, discussion, or get any feedback personally, so maybe it didn't
get through. (Does figi-l on Bitnet get to the other internet/forthnet
branches or are we receive only ?).
One 'reasonably' portable way to distribute the Basis document, preserve
the formatting information, but make it non-Word and non-printer specific
is to print it to disk with a POSTSCRIPT printer driver. Postscript is a
standard format which preserves the placement and non-textual content.
This will take care of anyone with a Postscript printer or printer with
postscript capability. For those without, there are several commercial
converter/interpreter programs (Goscript, Freedom of the Press, Prescript,
etc.) that convert postscript output for other printers or screen preview.
There is also at least one PD interpreter I have seen though have not used
it and cannot vouch for its practicality. Does anybody know if there are
Postscript -> TEX conversions out there, for the diehards and maybe non-DOS
types ?? Maybe there is also a program that could convert the document to
bitmap format (PCX, TIFF, etc.) for the lowest common denominator output
scheme that preserves format for output. The resulting file(s) would be
humongous though. Maybe compression of all the whitespace would save it
a little.
Jeff Sicherman
jajz801@calstate.bitnet
P.S. For someone who actually has a PS printer and Word, dont you have
to distribute the .ini file with the document itself to ensure it
can be printed ??