caag@vd.rl.ac.UK (Crispin Goswell) (01/29/88)
Some of you may have seen this before. Last time I tried to post this was just after the last time I ever receive anything from this list. - Crispin Goswell ---------------- This is to announce an independent implementation of the PostScript page description language for previewing on graphics workstations. It is freely available in source form from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, England. It is available to all, but not for inclusion into products without prior arrangement. It is a complete implementation with the exception of save and restore and readonly and executeonly. Thick lines, dashed lines, setscreen, settransfer, definefont, etc, are all fully implemented. We have used it locally to preview ditroff documents, for example. It has a small device specific module with a defined interface to aid portability and the rest of the code runs unchanged on suns, perqs, whitechapels, vaxen and pyramids (so far). It has run on PNX, 42NIX, System V, BSD 4.2 and Ultrix. Currently the only major driver uses a portable graphics library (called WW) which runs on suns, whitechapels and perqs, but is available freely only to UK academics. A couple of weeks work may thus be necessary to write a driver for each display for people who are not. There are binaries available for suns and perqs which can be distributed, however. The distribution contains a rather basic driver written for the sun pixrect layer. There is also a driver for X Version 10, though this doesn't support some operations, due to shortcomings with that version of X. A version for X Version 11 will appear soon. We hope to set up a machine on a public network so that material can be accessed by public ftp. The source has been posted to comp.sources.unix. We are distributing a version of the Hershey fonts with it. Any enquiries about the postscript previewer which are not about the mechanics of distribution should be sent to me: caag@uk.ac.rl.vd ...!mcvax!ukc!rlvd Distribution requests should be sent to: Single User Systems Support, Informatics Division, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, OXON OX11 0QX ENGLAND Email: cbp@uk.ac.rl.vd Please send a tape. Ftpable copies are available in England from the Shareware sites: uk.ac.ukc|University of Kent at Canterbury Computer Lab: address=info-server@ukc.ac.uk:mode=automatic:type=1 Other sites may have copies. In the US, it is available from: mimsy.umd.edu (Milnet East coast) and parcvax.xerox.com (Arpanet, west coast). called: PSPreviewer.tar.Z (compressed tar format). - Crispin Goswell