🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1681@intercon.com>, amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
> woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) writes:
> 
> >To my knowledge
> >hardware addition would make a significant impact on through put.
> Well, a hardware FPU will add several hundred dollars to the price.  Since
> for most applications (churning out pages of text), the speed is limited
> by the marking engine, it's probably a reasonable compromise.

Yep, it is more expensive.  But consider that approx $1000 of the price of
a postscript (Adobe) printer goes directly to adobe, both through royalties
and overhead, if it had been made an option, and the software written to
support both the FPU and compiled software simulations of the FPU, those
who needed it could purchase it as an upgrade.  I think that the world
would have been better off putting a little less money in Adobe's pocket
and more money into the functionality of the printer.  Yes Adobe has to
make a profit.  That is what they are in business for.  That is what every
one is in business for.  The royalties on the PS interpreter used to be
something like $5.00 for EACH face , ie Courier cost a total of $20.00
and the base royalty was about $300.00 for the interpreter, not counting
the royalty on the controler CPU design that was provided, nor the $2.5 million
up front licence agreement.  This has perhaps changed, but in the early
days this was prettymuch normal.  The base engine cost was about $600.00
from Canon.  The controller cost was about $800 the total font cost
was $175, The adobe royalty was about 300, so the cost to make the
printer was about $1900 or so. Double that for standard manufacture
overhead and profit, and you get an out of factory cost about $3600.
Wholesale was about 33% of 5495, or $3626.  The factory overhead
includes the amortization of the licence fee.  Now given the doubling
for standard manufactering overhead, the portion attributable directly
and easily to Adobe's monopoly of the PS world, was $950.  Somewhere
here, there is room for a $200 math co-processor, or at the least a $10.00
socket for one.

Cheers
Woody.

P.S.  I'd like for someone who has a true 300 dpi Adobe Ps implementation
WITH a FPU, if there is one, to try the following and tell me how long
it takes.
Select and scale ALL 35 fonts to 20 points, one at a time, and print
the entire UPPERCASE, LOWERCASE, and numbers on a single line for each
font.  This goodie takes upwards of 30 min on most printers, because it
effectivly disables the caching of the fonts.

In addition, Amanda, the major thing is that you use PS DIFFRENTLY than I
do.  I don't know what you do, but while we use the same PS, we work in
vastly diffrent domains of it's usage.

 
> Amanda Walker
> InterCon Systems Corporation
> --