knewton@watnow.waterloo.edu (K. Glen Newton) (03/08/91)
hello out there, At Energy Mines and Resources Canada we make maps and print maps. The software used to digitize maps is called Arc/Info. Arc/Info produces Postscript output. The polygons which make up these maps can be very large (~4000 vertices). In order to print these maps, a printing system called Scitex (no relation to TeX or LaTeX) is used. Scitex uses another format (it is not important) than Postscript, but comes with a Postscript-to-Scitex interpreter. Herein lies the problem: the interpreter cannot handle pathlengths larger that 1500. It dies when we try to push through our large polygons. So we thought that we would just break up these polygons. Well, besides being (very) non-convex, these polygons are not simple (they have holes in them, and so do the holes - ie. a landmass (polygon) with a lake in it, with an island in the lake, etc...). Breaking up the polygons is no longer a simple matter. By the way, Arc/Info codes the holes and hole-holes by using the sub-path feature of Postscript polygons. This means that you cannot separate the holes from the polygon very easily, as you don't want to paint over the hole area, as you cannot exactly say what is under it. The chances of getting a "fixed" interpreter are quite low, as it seems that the Scitex system is used a lot by publishers, but not much by people making maps (at least not in conjunction with Postscript), and so are low on the bug/feature fix list. I'm fairly sure that either someone out there has hit this wall already, or can help me out in some way. Pointers and/or advice will be answered by much thanks, but only code will guarantee my first born... thanks, K. Glen Newton software person Applied Research & Technology Service Energy Mines & Resources Canada (Ottawa) knewton@watnow.waterloo.edu -- ............................................................ k. glen newton knewton@mycologue.waterloo.edu
mcastle@mcs213e.cs.umr.edu (Mike Castle {Nexus}) (03/08/91)
Program Name: STK100.ZIP Directory: <MSDOS.GRAPHICS>
Description: Sprite Graphics Toolkit v1.0 for Turbo C
File Size: 214270 Type: 8 Date: 910109 Drive: PD1: Vers: 1
Blah, that screen cut and paste didn't work at all...
anyway, on simtel20, in pd1:<msdos.graphics> get the file stk100.zip
Hope this helps,
Mike
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