ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman) (12/05/89)
Called in sick today, couldn't tear myself off the Winter 1990 (!)
MachTech Quarterly... lotsa good stuff, as usual, also a treat
for the eye. A lengthy `Page & Picture' column on PostScript
brings forth information of a proposed new graphic file/ print
format, called `Hybrid PICT', that's already in use by packages
from Adobe Systems, Aldus, Cricket Software and Emerald City
Software (Illustrator, FreeHand, Cricket Draw and Smart Art
respectively). Other programs are capable of reading/ displaying
and properly printing from files of this type.
Unlike the EPSF format that, in its Macintosh' incarnation, consists
of 2 separate files (the data fork holding the PostScript code while
the resource fork holds either a PICT or a bitmap-wrapped-in-a-
PICT) thereby making it difficult for other programs to know which
part to decode and/ or print, the proposed new format makes use
of PicComments-embedded "crunched" PostScript code that provides
for mutually exclusive printing capability; no need to go into
that deeper than that here and now.
Needless to say, the format is _NOT_ actively supported by Apple,
which is a pity, considering the stand-alone-like features of
the proposed method. Apple, please, take note and act before it
is too late!.
Or, as Bill Woodruff, author of Cricket Draw 1.1, tells it in
the column:
"Once upon a time in the land of the Garage where happy boys
contemplated integrated circuits rather than stock options,
Apple said: "Let applications have a way to describe lines and
shapes to each other and exchange them, and let drawing applications
have a way to preserve drawings as lines and shapes rather than
small dots and let this goodness be called `PICT'. And let these
PICTs be saved to a heaven on a disk and also to a special heaven
in a special file called the ScrapBook through the grace of an
angel called Clipboard."
Wait, wait! there's more, that was just to whet you appetite!
"If QuickDraw and PostScript are the capital cities of desktop
publishing (you tell me which is staid colonial London and which
is revolutionary Paris), then the PICT and EPSF formats are the
gold and silver metals, the hard stuff that enables commerce
between different trading towns and the ports of distant nations.
[...]
The Hybrid PICT embeds custom PostScript in its QuickDraw description
so that it prints in high quality when sent to a PostScript printer.
It can go through the clipboard and be pasted (like a normal PICT,
and unlike an EPSF file).
Understanding Hybrid PICT's behavior is a good night-combat
orientation exercise for you Mac software developers, power users and
desktop cognoscenti. It will prepare you and your... minions, regiment,
staff... for the coming Armaggedon of desktop incompatibilities as we
are plunged into the world finals of tag-team imaging model and
visual interface championships between Adobe and Apple."
--------------------------------------------------------
Well, I'd say, it couldn't be expressed better. Or less poetically
(and can you imagine it uttered in context of the Messy-Dos graphics?)
For more of the same subscribe to the MacTech Quarterly, 4 issues
a year, US$ 30 (US), 40 (Canada), 45 ("foreign" surface), 60 ("foreign"
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Street, Renton WA 98055, (206) 251-5222. Visa, MasterCard, Discover
Card, American Express. No connection, just a-more-than satisfied
customer.
--Ian Feldman / ianf@nada.kth.se || uunet!nada.kth.se!ianf
/ "Let's get out of this place and nuke it from orbit" -- Alienejd@iris.brown.edu (Ed Devinney) (12/05/89)
In article <2469@draken.nada.kth.se> ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman) writes: > Or, as Bill Woodruff, author of Cricket Draw 1.1, tells it in the column [...] I haven't yet read the new MTQ, but I must hope that this is a misunderstanding on Ian's part. Bill Woodruff wrote important parts of Cricket Draw, but there were a few primary authors (Dennis McFerren, Georgianne Yashur, and Joe Zglinicki spring immediately to mind) and a number of secondary programmers on that project (yours truly among them). Bill Woodruff's work is amazing and essential to Draw's functionality, but he's not really the author, per se. ed (former Cricketeer) ++++++++ Ed Devinney...IRIS/Brown University...ejd@iris.brown.edu "They're building mechanical trees which grow to their full height, and then they chop themselves down" = Laurie Anderson