samurai@cs.mcgill.ca (Darcy BROCKBANK) (05/30/91)
I am considering writing a simple mouse-oriented postscript editor/viewer for the NeXT machine, for a programming project at school. Since every drawing program that I have looked at uses it's own format, I am led to believe that such a PostSript editor/viewer would be difficult to create. So does anyone have any comments about the feasablity of this? Is it hard or impossible? Also, is there a public domain PS interpreter out there? Thanks... - db
kenw@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) (06/02/91)
I've no idea whether your quest is difficult. However, there was a column in a recent Macintosh magazine claiming that "editable PostScript" should -- and probably would -- become the standard interchange language of complex documents. I thought it made sense. -- /kenw Ken Wallewein A L B E R T A kenw@noah.arc.ab.ca <-- replies (if mailed) here, please R E S E A R C H (403)297-2660 C O U N C I L
lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) (06/03/91)
kenw@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) writes: > I've no idea whether your quest is difficult. However, there was a >column in a recent Macintosh magazine claiming that "editable PostScript" >should -- and probably would -- become the standard interchange language of >complex documents. I thought it made sense. It makes little or no sense at all to me! Were they serious? A PostScript document doesn't mark a heading, or distinguish between uses of an italic font (keywords and emphasis, for example). There's little point in transmitting formatting information in most cases, but the structural information is entirely lost. Yes, you could define a new commenting convention to retain some of the structure. But what about ODA? What about SGML? Document interchange is the _purpose_ of SGML! Liam -- Liam Quin, lee@sq.com, SoftQuad, Toronto, +1 416 963 8337 the barefoot programmer
mh@roger.imsd.contel.com (Mike Hoegeman) (06/04/91)
In article <1991Jun3.025314.12511@sq.sq.com> lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) writes: >kenw@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) writes: >> I've no idea whether your quest is difficult. However, there was a >>column in a recent Macintosh magazine claiming that "editable PostScript" >>should -- and probably would -- become the standard interchange language of >>complex documents. I thought it made sense. > >It makes little or no sense at all to me! Were they serious? > >A PostScript document doesn't mark a heading, or distinguish between uses >of an italic font (keywords and emphasis, for example). There's little >point in transmitting formatting information in most cases, but the >structural information is entirely lost. > >Yes, you could define a new commenting convention to retain some of the >structure. > >But what about ODA? What about SGML? Document interchange is the _purpose_ >of SGML! > Usually when someone refers to "editable PostScript" They are referring refering to some well defined set of postscript routines (and possibly some use of structured comments) that are easily editable by some program. Adobe Illustrator's format is a example of this although it's focus is more on drawings than complete documents. I've never seen one as elaborate as something like ODA or SGML but it's doable I think and not really that wacky of a concept. -mike hoegeman, mh@awds.imsd.contel.com