arnold@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gregory Arnold) (05/23/91)
Hi, I don't know if this is even a valid question/request for this news- group, but here goes. I'm taking a summer course that deals with the postscript language. One of the requirements of this course is a paper that compares postscript to other page description languages. Would some kind soul please give me some examples of other such languages and possibly even a starting point for my research. Much thanks in advance Greg Arnold
woody@chinacat.unicom.com (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) (05/24/91)
In article <1538@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> arnold@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gregory Arnold) writes: >Hi, > > > I'm taking a summer course that deals with the postscript language. >One of the requirements of this course is a paper that compares postscript to >other page description languages. Would some kind soul please give me some Well, there is the pre-cursor to Postscript, IMPRESS. There is Kyocera's printer controller language, and there is QUICK. (a QMS Printer language). These are all "Page description" languages of a sort, but with the exeption of IMPRESS fall well short of anything that Postscript can do. Cheers Woody
henry@angel.Eng.Sun.COM (Henry McGilton) (05/24/91)
In article <1991May24.044839.9063@chinacat.unicom.com>, woody@chinacat.unicom.com (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) writes: * In article <1538@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> arnold@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gregory Arnold) writes: ** . . . summer course that deals with the postscript language. ** One of the requirements of this course is a paper that compares ** postscript to other page description languages. Would some kind ** soul please give me some . . . * Well, there is the pre-cursor to Postscript, IMPRESS. ImPress was a Document/Page Description Language designed and implemented by Imagen Corporation for controlling their original printers. ImPress syntax was somewhat influenced by Scribe, and was not postfix like Postscript. ImPress did not have outline scalable fonts -- it shipped bitmap fonts to the printer. The genealogy of ImPress was different enough from JaM-InterPress-PostScript that you could not call it a pre-cursor, or even a precursor. Following ImPress, Imagen Corp designed a language called DDL (Document Description Language) in an abortive attempt to head of PostScript. Hewlett Packard later `endorsed' DDL, for whatever effect that had on the marketplace. As I pointed out in a posting long ago, the success of PostScript can be judged by the number of street corner print shops proclaiming `PostScript Spoke Here', versus the number of such shops advertising ImPress, InterPress, DDL, or LaserLanguage. You might also want to look into PCL (Printer Control Language). * There is Kyocera's printer controller language, and there is * QUICK. (a QMS Printer language). These are all "Page Isn't that just QUIC? * description" languages of a sort, but with the exeption of * IMPRESS fall well short of anything that Postscript can do. I believe that AST Research also had something called LaserLanguage. If my aging memory serves me correctly, the precursor to PostScript was InterPress -- a Xerox Corporation language designed by the same people who eventually ended up designing PostScript. I'm sure the `experts' out there will correct me if I am wrong. ........ Henry
davis@3d.enet.dec.com (Peter Davis) (05/25/91)
In article <1538@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu>, arnold@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gregory Arnold) writes... > I'm taking a summer course that deals with the postscript language. >One of the requirements of this course is a paper that compares postscript to >other page description languages. Would some kind soul please give me some >examples of other such languages and possibly even a starting point for my >research. Much thanks in advance Well, you could contact Xerox to get information about Interpress. That's a PDL that they were pushing for a while. I don't know if they're still pursuing it or not. I believe Apple is trying to promote their QuickDraw graphics interface to a PDL, with the addition of the TrueType technology from MicroSoft. There's also some activity in the ISO on developing a Standardized Page Description Language (SPDL), but I don't know the full name of the committee/group.
kchen@Apple.COM (Kok Chen) (05/25/91)
woody@chinacat.unicom.com (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) writes: >In article <1538@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu> arnold@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gregory Arnold) writes: >>Hi, >> I'm taking a summer course that deals with the postscript language. >>One of the requirements of this course is a paper that compares postscript to >>other page description languages. Would some kind soul please give me some >Well, there is the pre-cursor to Postscript, IMPRESS. >There is Kyocera's printer controller language, and there is QUICK. (a QMS >Printer language). These are all "Page description" languages of >a sort, but with the exeption of IMPRESS fall well short of anything >that Postscript can do. >Cheers >Woody Oh boy, Woody, LT-P would be proud of you! :-) :-) (Alright, alright, there is *no* hyphen between the T and the P :-) imPRESS is not a PDL in the spirit of PostScript but a set of instructions for setting text and graphics, in the spirit of PCL and QUIC. Granted, the graphical features are more pleasing than PCL or QUIC, but it is nevertheless of a different class than a full-fledge language as PostScript. Afterall, is it meaningful to compare Smalltalk against the 7094 Assembler language? Perhaps Woody is confusing imPRESS with the stillborn DDL from Imagen. Mr. Arnold is probably better off comparing PostScript against Interpress. A simple introduction is available as Steven Harrington, Buckley, R., "Interpress, The Source Book," Brady, New York, 1988. ISBN 0-13-475591-X. Regards, Kok Chen, AA6TY kchen@apple.com Apple Computer, Inc.
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (05/25/91)
Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal writes
> Well, there is the pre-cursor to Postscript, IMPRESS.
IMPRESS was not the pre-cursor to PostScript. Perhaps you are thinking
of Interpress, from Xerox. IMPRESS was a horse of a completely different
black-and-white halftone.
--
Glenn Reid RightBrain Software
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us NeXT/PostScript developers
..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-326-2974 (NeXTfax 326-2977)uad1077@dircon.co.uk (Ian Kemmish) (05/25/91)
I actually have some Interpress documentation sitting behind my sofa, in my computer antiques collection. It embodied some of the key ideas of PS, but some of the aims were (I think) different. All the transformation stuff was there. Fonts were represented as vectors of small procedure. The path and stroke construction operators were sort-of familiar, but they didn't cope with curved lines. Color was handled differently, and sort-of allowed different colour spaces, but not in the same way as Level 2 PS. It did support the stencil-paint metaphor, plus sampled images. Where it was really different to PS was in that it was part of an overall document output system. Different printers were supposed to support different levels of the language, and the document creator could (I think) specify which features were required and which were optimal (Thus, unlike PS, it could support quite dumb matrix printers at a pinch). I remember once seeing some articles by adherents of both systems poitning out that Interpess wasn't flexible enough, and that PS didn't addres ``system-y'' issues in the wider printing environment. Sin ce I never was an INterpress system in operation, I don't quite appreciate just what these issues were. Oh, yes, and the language encoing was stright bytecodes. There was no ASCII syntax as PS has (other than that used to explain programs in the manual - a bit like Adobe's Type 1 encoding). Hope this provides a little illumination. -- Ian D. Kemmish Tel. +44 767 601 361 18 Durham Close uad1077@dircon.UUCP Biggleswade ukc!dircon!uad1077 Beds SG18 8HZ United Kingdom uad1077@dircon.co.uk
woody@chinacat.unicom.com (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) (05/26/91)
In article <53324@apple.Apple.COM> kchen@Apple.COM (Kok Chen) writes: > > > > > >Perhaps Woody is confusing imPRESS with the stillborn DDL from >Imagen. > About 5 years ago, when we had just started selling QMS printers, and I was just learning postscript, I ran across an ice-cream cone coded in a language much like Postscript. I guess I must have mis-remembered the name (it was after all, 5 years ago). I converted it over to postscript, and as I recall it, it took almost no effort. The language was extremely close to Postscript. I seem to recall that it was a XEROX internal language used for creating documents, and when I checked into it and tried to get some technical info on the supported commands, etc. I was unable to. AT the time, we were looking at various PDL languages as possible alternatives to Postscript. Needless to say, that search took very little time. I do remember getting into many protracted arguments with our HP rep who insisted that DDL was the wave of the future, and refused to accept Poscript. He hung in there until HP formally dropped DDL. From what people are saying, I must have indeed mixed it up with INTERPRESS, though I still seem to recall it as impress |-) Oh well, I guess that sort of stuff happens after 35. Cheers Woody > > >Regards, > >Kok Chen, AA6TY kchen@apple.com >Apple Computer, Inc.
kevina@apple.com (Kevin Andresen) (05/29/91)
At the risk of clarifying what many people have already made obvious (and adding a little more)... Interpress (note no capital P!) was the "precursor" to PostScript in the sense that it was developed in part by some of the principals at Adobe while they were at Xerox. They shared an imaging model but had different design goals -- think of them as branches from a common ancestor rather than stages in a product evolution. Both Interpress and PostScript (note the capital S!) derive from JaM (note the small a!), which was implemented by John Warnock and Martin Newell at PARC (which derived from the Design System, implemented by Warnock at Evans and Sutherland). Woody's ice cream cone was indeed an Interpress master. As Kok Chen and others have mentioned, imPRESS was a printer control language from Imagen, not a page or document description language. But, while on the subject, perhaps the original requestor should look at PCL5? In article <1991May25.125928.11342@dircon.co.uk> uad1077@dircon.co.uk (Ian Kemmish) writes: > I actually have some Interpress documentation sitting behind my > sofa, in my computer antiques collection. It embodied some of the > key ideas of PS, but some of the aims were (I think) different. > All the transformation stuff was there. Fonts were represented > as vectors of small procedure. The path and stroke construction > operators were sort-of familiar, but they didn't cope with > curved lines. Color was handled differently, and sort-of allowed > different colour spaces, but not in the same way as Level 2 PS. > It did support the stencil-paint metaphor, plus sampled images. Interpress 3.0 has direct support for Bezier curves. Fonts, color spaces, compression operators, etc. are actually defined as part of the "environment" which an Interpress printer could access -- they are not specified as part of the language the way that PostScript has font dictionaries, color space dictionaries, etc. Interpress supported color sampled images before PostScript, and more generally! > Oh, yes, and the language encoing was stright bytecodes. There was > no ASCII syntax as PS has (other than that used to explain programs > in the manual - a bit like Adobe's Type 1 encoding). There are tools available to the teeming number of Interpress developers to "assemble" and "disassemble" the manual syntax into byte codes. Note that PostScript Level 2 also features a binary encoding for compactness and performance! The significant difference between IP and PS is that Interpress *requires* page independence and is structured to do so, whereas PostScript only recommends it and provides structuring comments instead. PostScript has more standard programming language constructs like loop operators. (This stems from the different design goals -- Interpress was intended to be generated by a machine and printed on high-speed printers; PostScript was first implemented at the low-end and is designed to be programmable by humans as well as drivers.) In article <1991May24.181423.1102@engage.pko.dec.com> davis@3d.enet.dec.com (Peter Davis) writes: > > I believe Apple is trying to promote their QuickDraw graphics interface to a > PDL, with the addition of the TrueType technology from MicroSoft. QuickDraw is a more-or-less resolution-dependent imaging model with a procedural interface. I haven't heard that we're promoting it as a PDL (but no one would tell me anyway...) The TrueType font technology was developed at Apple and is licensed to Microsoft (note no capital S!) rather than vice versa. Disclaimer: Trust me... --Kevin Andresen [kevina@apple.com] "You took the wind right out of my sails/It must be luff/It must be luff"
lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) (05/30/91)
Kevin Andresen (kevina@apple.com) writes: > [...] > Interpress (note no capital P!) was the "precursor" to PostScript in the > sense that it was developed in part by some of the principals at Adobe > while they were at Xerox. They shared an imaging model but had different > design goals [...] > [...] Interpress supported color > sampled images before PostScript, and more generally! Perhaps, in a sense. The biggest three downfalls of the Xerox printers, as I see it, were probably: * Xerox's poor marketing * Interpress variations between printers * Xerox's poor marketing What I mean by the middle point is that individual printers speak a *subset* of Interpress. For example, when driver by ethernet the 3700 cannot receive downloaded fonts, but it can when driven in native mode. This sort of restriction and incompatibility between printers and modes within a single printer means that it is almost impossible to write a simple program to drive all Interpress printers. On the other hand, it isn't too hard to write PostScript that works on most or all of an *amazing* variety of devices. Yes, perhaps Level 2 PostScript will change that. Liam -- Liam Quin, lee@sq.com, SoftQuad, Toronto, +1 416 963 8337 the barefoot programmer
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) (06/05/91)
There was another big problem with Xerox printers and interpress. Interpress would choke when you asked it to give you 100% of the resolution of your device. For instance, if you had a 600*600 bitmap, and wanted to print it in a 2" by 2" square on the page, interpress would choke. It could not keep up with the print engine. You would get white streaks across the page, known as "band overruns". This happened to me several times on the Xerox Raven printer. This was an example of a larger flaw in design philosophy: It must produce fast results, not good results. Sacrificing quality for quantity, in retrospect, was the wrong thing to do with a laser printer. Don Gillies | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gillies@cs.uiuc.edu | Digital Computer Lab, 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana IL --