🚀 go-pugleaf

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.