mth@cci632.UUCP (Michael Hickman) (01/06/90)
Our engineering and manufacturing departments use Mentor Graphics tools for CAE/CAD and documentation. Our mfg. department is creating Manufacturing Assembly Instructions (MAI's) using DOC. They would like the workers on the mfg. floor to be able to pull up these MAI's on terminals in their areas. Unfortunately, Mentor does not provide and type of low-cost read-only station that we could use for this purpose. I was thinking that by purchasing the Postscript print driver we could plot documents and graphics to Postscript image files, use the PBM+ filters to convert these files to X11 bitmap files and use X-terminals on the floor to view them.... I'd like to know what X programs I can use to view X11 bitmap files. We don't have SR10.2 yet (Mentor won't ship it until release 8.0 of their software [April]), but we have a DN2500 in for evaluation from Apollo and I'd like to try this out while we have it here. Also - anyone used an Apollo machine as a server for an X-terminal??? Please correct any misunderstandings I may have about X - I'm not very familiar with it yet.... Thanks in advance... Michael Hickman CAE/CAD System Administrator Computer Consoles, Inc. Rochester, NY
nazgul@alphalpha.COM (Kee Hinckley) (01/08/90)
> From: mth@cci632.UUCP (Michael Hickman) > station that we could use for this purpose. I was thinking that > by purchasing the Postscript print driver we could plot documents and > graphics to Postscript image files, use the PBM+ filters to convert > these files to X11 bitmap files and use X-terminals on the floor to > view them.... > > I'd like to know what X programs I can use to view X11 bitmap files. There's a program called xldimage which will display X11 bitmap files, and there are a number of other PD files around to do the same thing. However where you are likely to run into problems is in your second step. There are virtually no filters that I have seen to read PS files, even image files, and convert them to something else. The problem is that there really isn't a PS image format, but rather people write a PS program that reads a bunch of numbers and constructs an image. The only way to read that is to have a postscript interpreter. Display Postscript would of course solve your problem, but.... I think what you need is something to convert Apollo graphics to X graphics. I seem to remember (and may have) at least one PD program that has shown up on this list to convert GPR bitmap files to GIF files, but I believe it only did black and white. In any case, a filter from GPR to something viewable under X shouldn't be that hard. Actually, that's an interesting question. How many people would pay money for a graphics conversion program? What formats? Is color important? I doubt that I have time to do it anyway, but it seems like it would be nice to be able to do all of your graphics conversion in one place. -kee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alphalpha Software, Inc. nazgul@alphalpha.com 148 Scituate St. Voice: 617/641-3805 Arlington, MA 02174 Autodial Fax: 617/641-3805 Handdial Fax: 617/641-3805<ring>3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ nazgul@pro-angmar.cts.com, 617/641-3722 (BBS), 617/648-5938 (computer) and 617/646-7703 (work) all wait on NYNEX incompetency (4 months and counting). -------