johan@dutnak2.UUCP (10/06/89)
IMPORTING GRAPHICS ON THE MAC ----------------------------- One of the Macintosh Macintosh strongest points is its ability to easily generate and manipulate graphics. Some of the pictures one wants to manipulate originate from outside the Mac. In our lab, we routinely generate so-called seismic wiggle-trace plots, as well as intensity plots, 3D contour plots etc. on a Convex minisuper. PIXELMAPS For pixelmaps, there are a number of excellent programs in the public domain (Image 1.16 and the NCSA suite) that allow you to import a pixelmap that originated from another machine. OBJECT ORIENTED GRAPHICS I think there is no nice solution to import object oriented graphics on the Mac (please let me know if I am wrong). I am aware of the VersatermPro "Save as Pict" option, but it doesn't give enough resolution. WHAT WE HAVE We use the UNIRAS graphics package on our (unix) machine to make our fancy plots. Besides some 100+ other devices, it also supports PostScript. Actually we use it in conjunction with CAP to directly print to a LocalTalk attached LaserWriter (via a FastPath). UNIRAS can also generate GKS and CGM metafiles. It even generates EPSF files, but without the bitmap "preview". WHAT WE WANT I want to import object oriented graphics on the Mac. EPSF with preview would also be nice. I think there should be some interchange format that programs on a unix machine can generate and Mac (conversion) applications can read. Or is there already such a thing? The reason we want this capability is for making reports and presentations. One wants to add annotation to graphs (arrows, units, figure numbers), or put multiple graphs on a page. I'm interested in hearing from people that want roughly the same things. Perhaps you're working on a solution, perhaps you've already solved it. Let me know. Johan de Haas tel. +31 15 785188 E-mail: johan@dutnak0.tudelft.nl Laboratory of Seismics and Acoustics Delft University of Technology P.O Box 5046, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands