romwa@utcs.UUCP (11/29/86)
The new document description language (DDL) which seems to be a worthy Postscript rival is one of Imagen's products. Is there any relationship between DDL and Impress, another name of a system which drives Laser printers? SCO XENIX comes with Impress drivers for Imagen's laser printers. If DDL==Imagen, then SCO XENIX users have quite a bonus. utcs!romwa Mark T. Dornfeld Royal Ontario Museum Computer Systems Toronto, Ontario
roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (12/01/86)
In <1986Nov29.000913.28639@utcs.uucp> romwa@utcs.uucp (Mark Dornfeld) writes: > The new document description language (DDL) which seems to be > a worthy Postscript rival is one of Imagen's products. PostScript is wonderful. If DDL is something which has roughly the same capabilites as PostScript, but is different just for the sake of being different, why bother? My personal opinion is that any laser printer company that doesn't come out with a true PostScript printer soon is headed for the tubes. -- Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 "you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"
shor@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Melinda Shore) (12/02/86)
In article <2519@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > PostScript is wonderful. If DDL is something which has roughly the >same capabilites as PostScript, but is different just for the sake of being >different, why bother? My personal opinion is that any laser printer >company that doesn't come out with a true PostScript printer soon is headed >for the tubes. Like Xerox? But seriously, folks, while I, too, like PostScript (a lot), I found this to be arrogant and a bit narrow. We have two Xerox 9700s and one 4050 running at full tilt much of the time, and find for many (if not most) applications (DP-type printing, forms, job output, reports, etc.) we need the speed of those printers more than we need the fancy features that PostScript provides. The probability that someone could drive a printer at 120 ppm with PostScript and make it available at reasonable cost approaches nil. It's not even clear that Xerox can drive a 9700 with Interpress, which is more oriented toward big, batch-y sort of situations than is PostScript. The jury is still out on what will become the standard page description language, and there really doesn't seem to be anything available yet that can service both small desktop publishing (I hate that phrase) applications and large DP printing needs. -- Melinda Shore ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!shor University of Chicago Computation Center XASSHOR@UCHIMVS1.Bitnet
matt@inuxg.UUCP (Matt Verner) (12/02/86)
> In <1986Nov29.000913.28639@utcs.uucp> romwa@utcs.uucp (Mark Dornfeld) writes: > > The new document description language (DDL) which seems to be > > a worthy Postscript rival is one of Imagen's products. > > PostScript is wonderful. If DDL is something which has roughly the > same capabilites as PostScript, but is different just for the sake of being > different, why bother? My personal opinion is that any laser printer > company that doesn't come out with a true PostScript printer soon is headed > for the tubes. > -- > Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy A qoute from this months BYTE: "...DDL supports both binary and ASCII representation (PostScipt is ASCII only), intelligent scaling of bit-map characters (PostScipt does not), composite objects (once again, PostScipt does not), full object caching (PostScript supports font-only object caching), and document layout (guess what? PostScipt does not)." Don't get me wrong, I happen to have a QMS ps800 that, when it decides to run atall, is a wonderfull PostScript printer. But PostScript is hardly the most powerfull or the best solution around. It just happens to have taken off quicker. In my opinion solely due to Apples backing of it with the laserwriter. Matt Verner UUCP: ...ihnp4!inuxc!matt AT&T Graphics Software Laboratory AT&T: (317) 352-6149 Indianapolis, IN "The whole point of this sentence is to clearly explain the point this sentence is making."