"Michael_Powers.Henr801M"@XEROX.COM (10/21/88)
I'm curious as to the state of Display Postscript in X11 (especially Adobe's work in the area). Does it exist? Can one purchase it today? If not, when? Is anyone from Adobe on this list? I read an article in some computer magazine the other day that was focusing on the NeXT machine. They made some comment about how sad it was that the NeXT machine was using Display Postscript instead of X. Now, correct me if I am wrong but I am assuming that the magazine had things backwards and perhaps it meant that NeXT was not using vanilla X?? Or maybe the articles author or I am just plain confused? Mike powers.henr801m@xerox.com
rich@RICE.EDU (Richard Murphey) (10/21/88)
"Michael_Powers.Henr801M"@xerox.com writes: >I read an article in some computer magazine the other day that was focusing >on the NeXT machine. They made some comment about how sad it was that the >NeXT machine was using Display Postscript instead of X. Now, correct me if >I am wrong but I am assuming that the magazine had things backwards and >perhaps it meant that NeXT was not using vanilla X?? Or maybe the articles >author or I am just plain confused? The NeXT machine is reported to use its own proprietary graphical windowing interface. A display postscript interpreter (developed with Adobe) embedded in the window server executes postcript commands and writes on video RAM. More information on this should appear in the November 1988 issue of BYTE. To answer your question about availability, version 1.0 of the NeXT system is reported to be slated for release in the second quarter of 89. it would be fair to guess that Adobe might eventually develop display postcript on other platforms. Anyone from Adobe listening and care to comment? Richard Murphey, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Rice University P.O.Box1892 Houston,TX 77251 713-527-8101 X3649 Internet:rich@rice.edu Bitnet:crm%rice Uucp:uunet!rice.edu!rich Disclaimer: NeXT, Display Postscript, and Adobe are registered trademarks. I have no connection to NeXT or Adobe, and can't guarantee any of these statements.
greg@gergle.UUCP (10/21/88)
>I read an article in some computer magazine the other day that was focusing >on the NeXT machine. They made some comment about how sad it was that the >NeXT machine was using Display Postscript instead of X. Now, correct me if >I am wrong but I am assuming that the magazine had things backwards and >perhaps it meant that NeXT was not using vanilla X?? Or maybe the articles >author or I am just plain confused? NeXT is using a different variation of Display PostScript. The DPS for X11 will be graphics display only. You will still use X11 to create windows and to get user input. (A pretty wart on a Toad) NeXT took Display PostScript and added extensions to make a windowing system. You have windows in your graphics context, and PostScript event procedures which respond to input events. At a quick glance, NeWS and the Display PostScript are very similiar, except NeXT has created a powerfull toolkit in Objective C for the *first* release. NeWS has been around a long time, and there is still not substantial interface library for porting C programs. For example to get input events, complete with control & shift masks, you have to get down and dirty in PostScript code. (Write an event handler cycle through the KeyState array, print out binary tokens, write a cps macro to read the results in C) -greg.