🚀 go-pugleaf

ngg@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Norman Goodger) writes:

>In article <21189@mimsy.umd.edu> folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) writes:
>>>Jobs made mistake #1 with his NeXT.  It all depends on PostScript.
>>I worry about QuickDraw.  One nice thing about PostScript is that it is
>>universal.  I can (with a little difficulty) generate PostScript on my Mac,
>>ship it across a 7-bit communications path--it is ASCII, not binary--and
>>print it on any of dozens of different systems.  QuickDraw will never do
>>that.
>>Another thing I really like about PostScript is that, being ASCII, I can
>>edit a graphics file to do things that even the most expensive drawing
>>programs cannot do.  QuickDraw, being binary, wouldn't gove me a chance,
>>even with ResEdit.

>The thing that bothers me is that Posscript is ascii, this makes its
>files ridiculously large. The software that interprets it is slower
>than molassses because it has to parse that ascii and convert it to
>something that can actually be drawn. This is why newer Postscript clone
>printers are getting faster. They are eliminating these problems. Give
>me QuickDraw any day...

Well, NeXT's use tokenized postscript meaning that those huge ascii
files are turned into little bitty files that a quickly gobbled up by
the interpreter. This is compiled into the application. If you want,
you can, of course, still give it the full PS text of your program.

Another incredibly important aspect of using postscript is that when
NeXT comes out with their color board, it can be a simple co-processor
board to which you send those little bitty tokenized postscript
streams for interpretation over the NeXTBus to the DPS server running
on whatever they choose to use. This is quite unlike that Mac where
bitmaps clog up the bus bandwidth and where color boards have to patch
the control program (o.k. OS) to do any acceleration.


-- 
Chris Whatley
Work: chari@pelican.ma.utexas.edu (NeXT Mail)		(512/471-7711 ext 123)
Play: chari@nueces.cactus.org (NeXT Mail)		(512/499-0475)
Also: chari@emx.utexas.edu