🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <y&#@byu.edu>, yackd@alaska.et.byu.edu (Don Yacktman) wrote:

> >Why not just use PostScript.  Authors of documentation can use any word
> >processing/page layout program they want and save it as PostScript.  Its
> >not like people are typically going to want to be able to modify documentation
> >they receive.  The original author can retain the document in whatever format
> >he wishes for latter modification.  
> >
> >Every NeXTstep program has the ability to create PostScript files and every
> >NeXT can read them.  Why does there seem to be resistence to using it as the
> >standard format of documentation?
> 
> My guess is that this is twofold:  (1) someone would have to set up DL so
> that it can index PS files.  To my knowledge (which may not be complete...)
> right now, indexing PS doesn't work the way you would want it to.  Even so,
> you wouldn't be able to easily open the PS file to the page where the word
> you searched for appears...or, for that matter, find the next word.  So, it
> would seem to me that until DL and Preview get better, you lose a lot by
> going to PS format.  And, (2) PS files are very big compared to, say, a
> WriteNow document.  They can be stored compressed, but then you don't have
> access to the info inside.  (What would be great, though, is to set things
> up so that a ".psZ" file would be zcatted into Preview...hmmm...)  Those are
> the reasons that are most obvious to me; I'm sure others can add to the list.

PostScript wouldn't be too good of a choice.  The problem is that PS
doesn't necessarily save text as a "stream of letters".  Very often words
are broken up and painted as individual letters.  Take the case of text
along a circle.  More than likely the text is painted character by
character as opposed to a string.  This would make searching it virtually
impossible.   

If the text was kept as a string, it wouldn't be too hard to get to the
page that it's on but it would be tricky to highlight it.  There would have
to be some intelligence built into the viewer.  

If there was an easy way to do it NeXT probably would already have the
features available in DL and Preview. 

Paul

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