kelvin@cs.iastate.edu (Kelvin Nilsen) (07/24/90)
In our organization, we make extensive use of Postscript for printing
technical documents with illustrations. Most figures are hand drawn
using xfig. However, we also need to scan line art and would like
to be able to incorporate standard clip art figures such as those
provided in many MS-DOS and Macintosh drawing packages.
We're looking for tools that would allow conversion between and
better integration of existing graphic formats. Most of us are
happy with troff and tex for text formatting, so we don't need
a full-fledged desktop publishing outfit. However, we need more than
stand-alone [x]fig, since xfig does not have, for example, the ability
to manipulate EPS and TIFF figures.
Our first preference would be to use public domain (or freely distributable)
software that runs under X on Unix. If the price is right (we are a
university), commercial software running under Unix would also be feasible.
A much less desirable solution would use commercial software running on
Macintosh or MS-DOS.
Please send answers to the following questions to me. If there is sufficient
interest and information, I will summarize for the network. Thank you.
1. What are some of the more popular formats for representation of
drawings and clip art? I'm looking for a one- or two-sentence
description of each format.
2. If different, what are the more popular formats for representation
of grey-scale bitmaps? I'm looking for a one- or two-sentence
description of each format.
3. What illustration packages are available for MS-DOS, Macintosh,
and Unix? For each of these, what is the default representation
for illustrations? What formats can the package import? What
formats can the package export? Are the drawing commands adequate?
Can text be rotated to arbitrary angles?
(We'd rather not hear about packages that don't produce high-resolution
Postscript quality output...)
4. What filters are available (for MS-DOS, Macintosh, and Unix) to convert
between one graphic representation and another?
I welcome responses from both users and commercial suppliers. However,
I reserve the right to edit responses in my summary.
Thanks much,
Kelvin Nilsen/Dept. of Computer Science/Iowa State University/Ames, IA 50011
(515) 294-2259 kelvin@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu uunet!atanasoff!kelvin