crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) (06/15/91)
Microsoft is apparently canceling it's printer software effort. According to an article I read using the Company News section of Prodigy (which uses Dow Jones News Retrieval service), Microsoft "failed to make a dent in the printer software industry dominated by Adobe." The article didn't mention TrueType explicitly, nor did it mention Apple's involvement with Microsoft and TrueType. The loss of competition might significantly strengthen NeXT's choice of PostScript as one of its supported standards. The PostScript page description language is a very elegant and practical interface level by which NeXT retains compatibility with the rest of the world (and RTF, TIFF, MIDI, and IP/TCP/SMTP/NFS are some other good, usable interfaces). NeXT Corporate Sales (Ken Rosen and Kris Younger) has produced a related document entitled "NeXT and Open Systems Standards", by the way. I assume you can get it from NeXT representatives, if it's not already available by FTP. It's distributed as a PostScript document, of course! Now, let's see edge anti-aliasing (especially for very pleasing horizontal character spacing) and auto kerning become commonplace in NeXT applications, via changes to NeXTstep display servers like the NeXTdimension psdrvr and changes to NeXTstep kits. Silicon Graphics and others, by going with X/Motif for supplying user interface tools to applications, are keeping themselves from this nice technology to some extent. (The X Window System uses pixel-size-relative coordinate systems instead of real-world length metrics like PostScript does, so rendering enhancements generally involve application program changes.) We need to see on-screen representation of documents be very, very pleasing to look at, and use of fine color pixel shades is necessary for this as long as display pixels are around 100dpi (or worse). Hey, do people think that NeXT attachments are acceptable around here (as attachments to USENET comp.sys.next news postings, that is, for things like diagrams)? Gary
rvs@uunet.uu.net (Ronald V. Simmons) (06/15/91)
In article <CRUM.91Jun15001421@alicudi.usc.edu> crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) writes: > Hey, do people think that NeXT attachments are acceptable around here > (as attachments to USENET comp.sys.next news postings, that is, for > things like diagrams)? > Only if the attachment is not over 30-40 KB in size. Some of us after all pay for our news feeds by the byte, a fact that is often forgotten by people who incur no direct or variable costs when using the net. As a case in point, a while back someone (who apparently had just discovered that their cube could make arbitrary noises) was crazy (and rude) enough to post a rather large .snd file. I wouldn't object to an interesting sound file, but from where I sat this one was pretty ordinary. Hopefully this guy got a solar flare's worth of flaming. However, if you have something that might be of general interest and that can best be expressed by posting in a graphical format (say eps), I'd like to see it. The whole idea of UseNet, from my understanding, is to facilitate communication of ideas (or white noise that looks like someone's idea of an idea), so go ahead and communicate. I suspect that a lot of people out there who read this group do so on NeXT machines using Newgrazer (like I am now), so compatibility shouldn't be an issue. For those who read news using rn on a vt100, they're no worse off than they were before, so why not post, assuming that you follow the caveat above. > Gary -- Ronald V. Simmons memphis!rvs@uunet.uu.net -- Ronald V. Simmons memphis!rvs@uunet.uu.net
ttl@sti.fi (Timo Lehtinen) (06/15/91)
In article <CRUM.91Jun15001421@alicudi.usc.edu> crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) writes: > >Hey, do people think that NeXT attachments are acceptable around here >(as attachments to USENET comp.sys.next news postings, that is, for >things like diagrams)? The problem with NeXT "attachements" is that they typically are not attachements but rather full NeXT message bodies. What we'd need is a more decent multimedia Mail.app (and News reader too) that'd obey by at least some of the established MHS concepts. Then there would be no problem sending multimedia *bodyparts* as that would still result in understandable (if not 100% renderable) messages even to non-NeXT recipients. (It would still serve to give a slight push in getting a NeXT in order to be able to properly view full 100% of the message :-) Timo (A NeXT user but boycotting Mail.app for the above mentioned reason) -- ____/ ___ ___/ / Kivihaantie 8 C 25 / / / SF-00310 HELSINKI, Finland ____ / / / Phone: +358 0 1399 0151, +358 49 424 012 Stream Technologies Inc. Fax: +358 0 1399 0154
gillham@andrews.edu (Andrew Gillham) (06/16/91)
In article <1991Jun15.134131.5116@sti.fi> ttl@sti.fi (Timo Lehtinen) writes: >In article <CRUM.91Jun15001421@alicudi.usc.edu> crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) writes: >> >>Hey, do people think that NeXT attachments are acceptable around here >>(as attachments to USENET comp.sys.next news postings, that is, for >>things like diagrams)? > >The problem with NeXT "attachements" is that they typically are not >attachements but rather full NeXT message bodies. What we'd need is >a more decent multimedia Mail.app (and News reader too) that'd obey >by at least some of the established MHS concepts. Then there would be >no problem sending multimedia *bodyparts* as that would still result >in understandable (if not 100% renderable) messages even to non-NeXT >recipients. > >(It would still serve to give a slight push in getting a NeXT in order >to be able to properly view full 100% of the message :-) > > >Timo (A NeXT user but boycotting Mail.app > for the above mentioned reason) I agree. I don't own a NeXT but find reading this newsgroup very interesting and informative. Yes, it does make me want to buy a NeXT, but poor white trash can only afford a vt100 compatible with rn... Hopefully you all won't decide to lock-out potential new users/buyers of NeXT machines. Of course I could setup a script to uudecode, uncompress, untar, and de-rtf the articles, but with the volume in this group that would be REAL inconvenient. (and I'd proably stop reading it) And a lot of sites without NeXT's that carry comp.sys.next would have to drop it because of the increase (big time) in size. putting the uuencoded extra stuff at the bottom of the text part of the posting would work, but > 400 40k articles would tend be expired REAL quick. Just the opinions of a unfortunate individual without a NeXT... ;-) -Andrew -- ===================================================================== Andrew Gillham ****** Andrews University ****** (gillham@andrews.edu) I would've added a cool .signature, but I already mailed this letter.
mcgredo@prism.cs.orst.edu (Don McGregor) (06/16/91)
In article <CRUM.91Jun15001421@alicudi.usc.edu> crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) writes: > >The article didn't mention TrueType explicitly, nor did it mention >Apple's involvement with Microsoft and TrueType. > A nit: MicroSoft was working on "TrueImage," a PostScript clone. "TrueType" is a font technology, and it is already being shipped by Apple. WinDoze will probably ship with it sometime soon. I wonder where that leaves the companies that were advertising TrueImage printers. Don McGregor | Statistics are our _friends_. It's just that mcgredo@prism.cs.orst.edu| they're the sort of friends who insist on | showing us their vacation slides.
raymond@picasso.cs.unc.edu (Will Raymond) (06/16/91)
Even though I have a NeXT, my newsfeed is via vt100 through
work. Attachments, now, would be no use to me, but I think they would
be interesting once I have the equip. to get news on my cube.
How do we address the problems of users who are stuck with a vt100
interface and/or pay for newsfeeds by the byte?
How about a parallel news group, comp.sys.next.attachments, and some
kind of scheme that will post articles with attachments to both
comp.sys.next and comp.sys.next.attachments. There would be
some way to correlate ther parts.
This way, users stuck with vt100s or whom don't want to pay outrageous
sums, can get/read the vanilla news group.
Of course, newsreaders would have to be adjusted.
Will
******* Will Raymond - Northern Telecom NTP in RTP
| | ~ ~ | |
. O o . Work: ...uucp!rti!ntpdvp1!willr
| .V. | Fun: ...uucp!cs.unc.edu!raymond
._ _.
| U | I speak for myself.crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) (06/17/91)
> A nit: MicroSoft was working on "TrueImage," a PostScript clone. > "TrueType" is a font technology, and it is already being shipped > by Apple. WinDoze will probably ship with it sometime soon. Thanks for supplying that info. That makes more sense. TrueType _has_ made a dent as a font (not general page description) imaging technology; It (TrueType) does a good job in Apple Macintosh System 7. I wonder if current Apple printers like the StyleWriter use TrueType for font outline imaging (or just scaling which is part of imaging) but QuickDraw for other graphics imaging. Does anyone know if Apple was planning on using TrueImage in its printers to help introduce another well-defined page description language? (So, perhaps there is a chance it will go back to working on low-cost PostScript printers and thus stay more compatible with NeXT.) I think this discussion can be moved to one of comp.periphs.printers, comp.fonts and comp.graphics. Gary
keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) (06/17/91)
In article <CRUM.91Jun16124453@alicudi.usc.edu> crum@alicudi.usc.edu (Gary L. Crum) writes: >> A nit: MicroSoft was working on "TrueImage," a PostScript clone. >> "TrueType" is a font technology, and it is already being shipped >> by Apple. WinDoze will probably ship with it sometime soon. > >Thanks for supplying that info. That makes more sense. TrueType _has_ >made a dent as a font (not general page description) imaging >technology; It (TrueType) does a good job in Apple Macintosh System 7. >I wonder if current Apple printers like the StyleWriter use TrueType >for font outline imaging (or just scaling which is part of imaging) >but QuickDraw for other graphics imaging. Does anyone know if Apple >was planning on using TrueImage in its printers to help introduce >another well-defined page description language? (So, perhaps there is >a chance it will go back to working on low-cost PostScript printers >and thus stay more compatible with NeXT.) As I understand it, Apple's low-end printers (StyleWriter and the Personal LaserWriters) come with TrueType technology for System 6.0.7 (TrueType is already built into System 7.0). What really bites me is the recent article in Byte magazine talking about those printers. In the article, it mentions that TrueType was developed by MicroSoft and was licensed to Apple. MicroSoft!?!?! It was the other way around! How could such a large industry magazine make such a bone-headed mistake? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keith Rollin --- Apple Computer, Inc. INTERNET: keith@apple.com UUCP: {decwrl, hoptoad, nsc, sun, amdahl}!apple!keith "But where the senses fail us, reason must step in." - Galileo