henry@angel.Sun.COM (Henry McGilton--Software Products) (02/25/90)
Well, peoples, the 'PostScript Language and Bitmap Wars' are wearing a little thin. I read this forum because of a desire to obtain technical information about the PostScript Language. Of late I have seen far too much `Adobe Bashing'. I would like to see this forum devoted to the technical aspects of the PostScript language and what you can do with it, rather than the recent spate of `Adobe are a bunch of arrogant people trying to control the world'. Now PostScript, in my opinion, does have its problems. I'm sure that the PostScript we know and love today is not the last word. There will probably be a PostScript-2001. By which time the laser-holographic readouts on your programmable toaster will be driven by a 10,000 MIPS PostScript interpreter, and so on. What we have today can't possibly be the last word -- it's simply not cast in fused toner. But I see too many postings to this group flaming about what a money-grubbing bunch of despots Adobe are, and what a brain damaged language PostScript is, and so on. To those people, I simply have this advice: if you don't like what Adobe have done, do something better. If you think you have a better page description language, build the damned thing and market it. If you're tired of waiting for 9600 Baud serial interfaces, build yourself a printer with a fibre-optic satellite interface. But otherwise, cease whining. We really need to place in perspective what Adobe have accomplished by creating PostScript. People here in the Bay Area should take a walk around down-town Palo Alto some time. Tally how many corner shops there are full of Macintoshes and LaserWriters, and signs in their windows proclaiming `PostScript Spoken Here'. You don't see shops on street corners claiming `InterPress Spoken Here', or ImPress, or DDL, or . . . Adobe, by the manner in which they marketed PostScript, have CREATED entire new enterprises, that have created thousands of new jobs. Many people have made (lots of) money creating things that revolve around PostScript. Sitting on my shelf here are a collection of software packages that would not today EXIST were it not for PostScript. Each of those packages were created by people who have lucrative enterprises because of PostScript. People who saw a market niche and moved in to fill it, instead of sitting around whining. There are entire magazines devoted to publishing that might not exist if PostScript hadn't come along. Just yesterday I was able to format a troff document on my Sun Workstation, create PostScript using TranScript, move the file over to a Mac disk, take the disk down the street to a PostScript service bureau, and print very nice thank you pages on a Varityper 600 dpi laser engine. 1270 or 2540 dpi Linotronic available if I want it. What is now a ho hum exercise was almost impossible five years ago, and out of the question ten years ago. Such service bureaus didn't exist. Ten years ago I went out of my mind trying to get my first UNIX book typeset from a Scribe description. Five years ago I was able to generate camera-ready art for my second book using PostScript laser engines. Ten years ago, getting from troff (or Scribe, or TeX) to a Mergenthaler machine, or an APS-5, or a you name it, was pretty well nigh impossible. You couldn't get to a VT-600 because they didn't even exist. You had to use troff (or Scribe, or TeX), by the way, because the Macintosh didn't exist either. I have a Sun system at home, and I have a PostScript-based LaserWriter hooked up to it. Gathering cobwebs on the floor beside it is a Diablo 630 (remember them?) that was a fantastic machine when I bought it in 1982, for the princely sum of $2,400. Now, I can't give the thing away, even to starving non-profit outfits. For roughly the same price range, you can now get a PostScript laser engine capable of feats that we only dreamed of ten years ago. Right now, I'm working on a new book. Because of PostScript, and the availability of low-cost typesetting or near typesetting, I am in the (either enviable or maybe stupid) position of being able to do my own publishing, from creating the text to generating camera-ready masters that can go straight to the print shop. I can bypass McGraw-Hill and their army of people with the finest typesetting technology of the 1940's. And I can cut three to six months off the schedule for a 300 page book. PostScript is as much a socio-economic phenomenon as it is a technological innovation. Well, I don't always know where I'm going, but it's good to be back. So, let's stop bashing Adobe and get on with doing nifty things with PostScript. To quote Harry Stine, `It's raining soup, grab a bucket'. Let's get back to technical PostScript, shall we? .......... Henry For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.
jaz@abvax.UUCP (Jack A. Zucker) (02/25/90)
Your article reeks of America... Love it or leave it. -jaz
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (02/27/90)
jaz@abvax.UUCP (Jack A. Zucker) writes about the request to stop the flame
wars:
> Your article reeks of America... Love it or leave it.
Look, this isn't alt.flame. Some of us read this group to exchange ideas
about PostScript, not to watch all the wannabes preen their egos and whine
about what is, in the final analysis, the fact that Adobe created
PostScript and they didn't.
If there's any of the "Love it or leave it" philosophy here, it's in the
anti-Adobe attitude that seems to say that Adobe is evil because they're
successful, and that anyone who isn't flaming Adobe must be a simpering
sycophant. Anyone who dares to be *happy* about PostScript, or who finds
it *incredibly useful*, is somehow on the defensive lately.
No, the attitude of the folks who side with Adobe and who want to talk
about using PostScript instead of flaming it is not "Love it or leave it."
If you want to state it in belligerent form, it's "Put up or shut up!"
I'm tired of having the newsgroup overrun by the whining and the flaming.
Sensible criticism would be useful, but the sort of criticism we've seen in
the newsgroup in the past few months shows *no* understanding of language
design, engineering tradeoffs, logical structure, consistency, or human
engineering (to name a few) - all concepts which Adobe *did* consider.
Nor have I seen anyone show even a plausible fragment of a replacement or
competitor for PostScript. It's *just* noise, and it's rude to keep
dumping nontechnical crap into a (formerly) technical newsgroup.
--
Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870
...Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) (02/28/90)
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: >Look, this isn't alt.flame. Some of us read this group to exchange ideas >about PostScript, not to watch all the wannabes preen their egos and whine ... >Nor have I seen anyone show even a plausible fragment of a replacement or >competitor for PostScript. It's *just* noise, and it's rude to keep I completely agree with you. I am discussing very important technical aspects of the PostScript language, and proposing substantial improvements to that language. What are you doing Dick? What is your contribution to this discussion? Nobody but Apple and Adobe had a say in what the new world standard for storing and transmitting image data should look like, and how it should be implemented. You are now telling us that even after this flawed standard has been accepted by people who know very little about programming languages and the theory of information, nobody should be allowed to discuss PostScript's deficiencies. Your comments do not reek of America. They reek of Russia before Gorbachev. Years ago IMAGEN developed a language called DDL (Document Description Language). Our DDL interpreter supports both a readable and binary format. DDL allows you to do everything that can be done in PostScript, and more. For example, you can specify a complex document layout for signature printing on top of page descriptions. I was not involved in the design of DDL. After several years of using both DDL and PostScript, I have come to the conclusion that both languages have certain deficiencies which should be corrected in future document description languages. Tremendous advances in the power of hardware should be used to develop a new, object-oriented document description language that would be much more powerful, much easier to use, much easier to debug, and much more difficult to implement than either PostScript or DDL. We could design such a language in this newsgroup if you would only let us do that. Ivan N. Bach Tel (408) 986-9400, x508 QMS, Inc. Fax (408) 727-3725 2650 San Tomas Expressway arpa: ib@imagen.com Santa Clara, CA 95051 uucp: decwrl!imagen!ib
keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (02/28/90)
(I tried to contact Mr. Bach by e-mail but it bounced. So I've restricted this to "usa" distribution.) In article <9460@imagen.UUCP> ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes: [much generalized bitching about almost everything and anything Adobe has ever done, or ever might do] >Ivan N. Bach Tel (408) 986-9400, x508 >QMS, Inc. Fax (408) 727-3725 >2650 San Tomas Expressway arpa: ib@imagen.com >Santa Clara, CA 95051 uucp: decwrl!imagen!ib Just out of curiosity, what is it that QMS Inc. does to make its money? kEITHe
woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) (02/28/90)
In article <9460@imagen.UUCP>, ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes: > rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: > > > I completely agree with you. I am discussing very important technical aspects > of the PostScript language, and proposing substantial improvements to that > language. What are you doing Dick? What is your contribution to this discussion? > Nobody but Apple and Adobe had a say in what the new world standard for storing > and transmitting image data should look like, and how it should be implemented. > You are now telling us that even after this flawed standard has been accepted by > people who know very little about programming languages and the theory of > information, nobody should be allowed to discuss PostScript's deficiencies. Your > comments do not reek of America. They reek of Russia before Gorbachev. > Well ssaid. > to do everything that can be done in PostScript, and more. For example, you can > specify a complex document layout for signature printing on top of page hmmmm... They ARE similar, but I think that the statement above is not quite true. I don't think that DDL is anyways close to the power of a general purpose language, such as postscript has. I seem to remember that DDL is not really a programming language, more of a printer controller. I have not used DDL extensivly. HP was trying to keep it to proprietary when they were considering it, and no matter how I tried, I could not get any documentation on the language. So I may be all wet behind the ears in regard to ddl. x x x x x x x x x > descriptions. I was not involved in the design of DDL. After several years of > using both DDL and PostScript, I have come to the conclusion that both languages > have certain deficiencies which should be corrected in future document description > languages. Tremendous advances in the power of hardware should be used to develop > a new, object-oriented document description language that would be much more > powerful, much easier to use, much easier to debug, and much more difficult to > implement than either PostScript or DDL. We could design such a language in this > newsgroup if you would only let us do that. > > Ivan N. Bach Tel (408) 986-9400, x508 > QMS, Inc. Fax (408) 727-3725 > 2650 San Tomas Expressway arpa: ib@imagen.com > Santa Clara, CA 95051 uucp: decwrl!imagen!ib
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (03/01/90)
> Nor have I seen anyone show even a plausible fragment of a replacement or > competitor for PostScript. It's *just* noise, and it's rude to keep > dumping nontechnical crap into a (formerly) technical newsgroup. Well, perhaps you should look into the Xerox interpress page-description language, the technical parent of postscript. It is probably true that if Xerox had released interpress two years earlier, the name of this group would be named comp.lang.interpress, rather than comp.lang.postscript. Postscript was in the right place at the right time to satisfy a need, and there was a dirt cheap laser printer to run it. Put interpress in the same position, and you would have seen similar results. In some ways, Postscript is a workhorse, just like the IBM PC, or Fortran IV. But why do you assume it has no competition? Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies
kchen@Apple.COM (Kok Chen) (03/01/90)
woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) writes: [ in response of Ivan Bach's bringing up DDL (you *are* kidding, Ivan, right?) when talking about PostScript, ] >hmmmm... They ARE similar, but I think that the statement above is not >quite true. I don't think that DDL is anyways close to the power of a >general purpose language, such as postscript has. I seem to remember that >DDL is not really a programming language, more of a printer controller. >I have not used DDL extensivly. HP was trying to keep it to proprietary >when they were considering it, and no matter how I tried, I could not >get any documentation on the language. So I may be all wet behind the >ears in regard to ddl. Yes (re: last sentence above). DDL[rip] was indeed programmable. A scan of its manual will show which two PDLs that preceeded it heavily influenced it (hint: both PDLs had John W.'s imprint on them :-). Perhaps the person who was responsible for the DDL manual can comment. I know she reads this newslist from the same machine that I do (hi, Debra! :-). IMHO, DDL had *even* more features that can potentially slow down a printer than PostScript. :-) And, IMHO, it also had the wrong "kitchen- sinks" thrown in. Minimal cover (in the Algebraic sense) was never a design consideration (just take a look at all the redundant raster-ops that were thrown in in the original version - an overkilling reaction to PostScript's distinct lack of such facilities - note that I am not saying whether more raster-ops are needed or not :-). It was introduced *after* PostScript has already been globally accepted by the printing community. A case of too little, too late. And, modulo job control facilities, it did *not* give the market anything tangibly different from PostScript other than the fact that it *was* different from PostScript. Many elements of DDL, e.g. fount scaling, were held with even greater secrecy than you see in PostScript. (There are probably all of a half-dozen people on earth who knows the details of DDL's fount mechanism. :-) Again, IMHO. Kok Chen/AA6TY kchen@apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. Disclaimer, disclaimer, DISCLAIMER up the whazoo for this posting!
ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) (03/01/90)
In article <6968@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) writes: >Just out of curiosity, what is it that QMS Inc. does to make its >money? Do you mind? We are trying to have a technical discussion about a very important aspect of the PostScript language. If you do not have anything to contribute, keep your comments to yourself. Yes, I work for a manufacturer and distributor of PostScript printers. I am trying to improve our products, and save our customers a lot of time and money. What are you trying to do? I was hoping that some engineer or scientist from an institution such as AT&T Bell Laboratories, who is familiar with both PostScript and Claude Shannon's theory of information, would comment on the efficiency of PostScript. What I would like to know is whether Bell Labs would accept PostScript as designed by Adobe Systems as the ONLY world standard for the storing and transmitting of image data, and whether people at Bell Labs think that we need a more compact representation of PostScript statements. Come to think of it, people from Bell Labs may not want us to add the support for a binary format to PostScript interpreters. When we start transmitting large numbers of PostScript programs in readable format over telephone lines, the revenues of AT&T will increase substantially. Ivan N. Bach Tel (408) 986-9400, x508 QMS, Inc. Fax (408) 727-3725 2650 San Tomas Expressway arpa: ib@imagen.com Santa Clara, CA 95051 uucp: decwrl!imagen!ib
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (03/01/90)
|I was hoping that some engineer or scientist from an institution such as |AT&T Bell Laboratories, who is familiar with both PostScript and Claude |Shannon's theory of information, would comment on the efficiency of |PostScript. What I would like to know is whether Bell Labs would accept |PostScript as designed by Adobe Systems as the ONLY world standard for |the storing and transmitting of image data, and whether people at Bell |Labs think that we need a more compact representation of PostScript |statements. Why does it have to be somebody from Bell Labs? Any communications engineer can understand the principles. As far as the "inefficiency" of PS goes, there are two orthogonal issues here: (1) How much does the 7 bit channel slow you down and (2) how much can you squeeze the image data down to. 1. Encoding in hex will double the size of images compared to pure binary. If you get smart you could squeeze 4 bytes into 5 with a base 85 encoding, giving an efficiency of 80%. If it weren't for the control characters, the theoretical maximum of the 7 bit channel would be 7/8th of that of the 8 bit channel (87%). Not exactly a tremendous gain over base 85 encoding. 2. How much information is really in the picture depends what's in the picture. Compression techniques such as run-length encoding, Huffman encoding, etc, etc. increase the information content by squeezing out redundancy. A more aggresive technique is to retain the high-level description of the picture, e.g. describe a circle by its radius and position instead of sending the bitmap. Surprise, this is what some PS programs do. Personally I'm looking forward to see if claims for fractal encoding (recent SciAm) can be upheld. So you trade-off processing time against transmission time. By the way, PS is hardly a candidate as the ONLY world standard for storing images. Ask people in graphics. I see it as a PDL, that's all. If you want to flame this technical writeup, please do. It would be a welcome change from the recent round of postings.
keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (03/02/90)
In article <9466@imagen.UUCP> ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes: >In article <6968@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM >(Keith Ericson) writes: > >>Just out of curiosity, what is it that QMS Inc. does to make its >>money? > >Do you mind? We are trying to have a technical discussion about a very >important aspect of the PostScript language. If you do not have anything >to contribute, keep your comments to yourself. Yes, as a matter of fact I _do_ mind!!!!!! You haven't contributed anything to the technical discussion YET! Political? Yes! Economic? Maybe? Useful? I doubt it! Anti-Adobe? Definitely! You want something _really_ useful: here it is - To put a submitter's name in a kill file (using the 'rn' news reader, anyway) use the following procedure: 1. hit to start the edit of your local kill file 2. add a line that looks, for example, like this: /ib@apolling/h:j (this sez: look for the pattern "ib@apolling" in the header and mark that article as already read) 3. terminate the edit 4. sigh "aaaahhhhhhh" as all that stuff forever disappears from your screen. Bye, bye! kEITHe
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (03/02/90)
As briefly as I can dispense with this... In article <9460@imagen.UUCP>, ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes: [citing my complaints about recent flaming] > I completely agree with you. I am discussing very important technical aspects > of the PostScript language, and proposing substantial improvements to that > language... Your initial "discussion" was a collection of innuendos attacking Adobe and PostScript, mostly unsupported by facts, and tackling isolated areas with no attempt at a cohesive solution. > Nobody but Apple and Adobe had a say in what the new world standard for storing > and transmitting image data should look like, and how it should be implemented. 1. PostScript is not a "standard for storing and transmitting image data." PostScript is a page-description language. It only deals reasonably with certain types of images, in certain contexts, and it doesn't attempt to address a general image storage/transmission problem. In fact, because it is programmable, it is capable of dealing with various standards which might be developed for various classes of images. 2. Nobody gave Apple or Adobe a monopoly on what they did. (In fact, at this point I don't see what Apple has to do with it, now that there are so many PostScript printers other than the LaserWriters.) Adobe's control exists because they're doing the work and nobody else is! > You are now telling us that even after this flawed standard has been accepted by > people who know very little about programming languages and the theory of > information, nobody should be allowed to discuss PostScript's deficiencies... If you had been willing to read what I wrote, you would have seen that I explicitly mentioned that "sensible criticism would be useful." I honestly mean that. There are problems with PostScript. I'm sure that even Glenn and the other Adobe folks will tell you PostScript has problems! (They can probably identify the real ones better than the rest of us, too.) It's possible to discuss the problems without attacking anyone. It should even be possible, if we're going to have useful discussions, to look at some- thing which seems like a problem to some people and come to realize that it's "designer's choice." But to do the latter, we have to realize that there's a difference between "that's wrong" and "that's not the way I'd have done it." >...Your > comments do not reek of America. They reek of Russia before Gorbachev. Is this your technical contribution? I was complaining that much recent criticism has not been useful, constructive, or technical, and you come back with something like this. You have proven my point better than I could have done. Either give some reason for your libelous statement or retract it. > Years ago IMAGEN developed a language called DDL (Document Description Language). > Our DDL interpreter supports both a readable and binary format. DDL allows you > to do everything that can be done in PostScript, and more... Then a productive discussion would be to explore why DDL failed and/or why PostScript succeeded. We could learn from that, I hope! The reasons might very well turn out to be non-technical--but that is often the case for acceptance of a programming language. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.
hwt@.bnr.ca (Henry Troup) (03/07/90)
In article <9466@imagen.UUCP> ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes: >.... What I would like to know is whether Bell Labs would accept >PostScript as designed by Adobe Systems as the ONLY world standard for >the storing and transmitting of image data, and whether people at Bell >Labs think that we need a more compact representation of PostScript >statements. Are people in this group aware of the ISO standard project to creat SPDL - standard page description lnaguage ? This is where these discussions are being done meaningfully. If Imagen is not involved, they should be. If Ivan is not involved, maybe he should be. P.S. Bell Northern Research is not part of AT&T - so I don't work at Bell Labs, ok? -- Henry Troup - BNR owns but does not share my opinions ..utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!hwt%bmerh490 or HWT@BNR.CA
woody@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Woodrow Baker) (03/08/90)
In article <1627@bmers58.UUCP>, hwt@.bnr.ca (Henry Troup) writes: > In article <9466@imagen.UUCP> ib@apolling (Ivan N. Bach) writes: > Are people in this group aware of the ISO standard project to creat > SPDL - standard page description lnaguage ? This is where these > discussions are being done meaningfully. If Imagen is not involved, they > should be. If Ivan is not involved, maybe he should be. Apparently not. Do you know where they can be reached, and does somone there have a usenet node. Cheers Woody