🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jul8.094742.20455@cs.sfu.ca> miron@cs.sfu.ca (Miron Cuperman) writes:
>
>Show me a PD high end desk top publishing system.  Or an expert
>system.  Or a CAD system.  Or something like Mathematica.  You cannot
>do it PD or under the GPL because you would go bankrupt.

Here, I have to disagree with Miron. I think that 10 years ago,
someone would have said this of compilers and other s/w tools too.
Whatever, if you really want to see PD high end packages like these,
all you need to do is to convince companies to play the GNU game. The
FSF and MIT have done and continue to do a great job on this to date,
and I see no reason why, in prinicple, there could not be an excellent
PD version of any of the tools you mention. All it needs for a few
companies to subsidize, either directly by donating cash or people,
the development of these tools, in the same way as they have done so
for gcc, emacs and X.

What you will *not* see produced in this way, however, are
put-together custom systems. You might well see an excellent DTP
system, but you won't see a system written to mass-produce high-volume
text/image publications with consistent formats. No Mac program can do
this, and nor can anything else, because to get the speed and the
simplicity of use, you need to tailor the software and the hardware to
the task at hand. And before I am critiqued for sounding like early
Unix doubters, I suggest that anyone who thinks that the argument that
high quality general purpose software is fast enough for any given
specialized task to try ramping up a PostScript interpreter to do 4
pages a minute of 11" x 8" paper with 50% of that being half-toned
images. Just as you get there, you'll find a client who needs it a
little bit faster. if you're lucky, there'll be some way to get that
speed by taking advantage of some peculiar feature of their needs.

The FSF is quite capable of providing the world with excellent tools,
but not excellent systems. The tools, when combined with our own
knowledge, can often be the means of building excellent development
platforms, but I don't think they will play a big role in end-user
specialized systems. Miron just chose the wrong type of example.


-- 
"When in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town
meeting, to express their opinion on some subject that is vexing the land, that
I think is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever
assembled in the United States." - Thoreau