Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!RICE.EDU!phil From: phil@RICE.EDU (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers Subject: Why I think I dislike PostScript Message-ID: <8707282014.AA19351@brillig.umd.edu> Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 14:19:40 EDT Article-I.D.: brillig.8707282014.AA19351 Posted: Wed Jul 15 14:19:40 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 30-Jul-87 01:56:43 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 50 Approved: laser-lovers@brillig.umd.edu >From: Southall.pa@xerox.com > There is, in principle at least, a way of making your own > PostScript versions of Computer Modern fonts. If you set > > tracingchoices:=1 ... > What you *don't* get with this approach is Adobe's proprietary 'font > magic', which looks after the preservation of character features when > their own character shape descriptions are digitized at low and medium > resolutions....The results of the Metafont-to-PostScript conversion > will be less satisfactory in text sizes than pixel files produced with > Metafont's own digitizing algorithm. From this I assert the following claim: what you don't get with PostScript is any versatility in digitizing your own fonts. You are stuck with the algorithms that Adobe uses. Worse than that, you cannot even get to all the algorithms that Adobe has, unless you know about the "magic". Am I right? Is it true that the only type of font description which can be given to a PostScript engine is a spline-based one? >From: prj@pm-prj.lcs.mit.edu > The lab I work in has just started converting to using PostScript > printers as our standard printers. We are now getting complaints from > our TeX users about how slow printing is for them now. Quotes range > from an average of 2 pages per minute up to a max of 5 pages per minute > (both on the "24 pages/minute" PS2400s). Since this must be a common > problem for other academic and research institutions.... 5 pages per minute? I get better performance out of our Imagen 2308: 8 pages per minute and it isn't a PostScript engine. From this I assert the following claim: PostScript engines are very slow. Perhaps someday in the distant future they might be running an acceptable speed---when we start using 68030 processors in them and when we start putting them on Ethernets (so that transmitting the very verbose document description won't slow us down as much). Abstractions are very nice from a theoretical standpoint. Certain abstractions are also very nice in practice. PostScript is a very nice abstraction. But when the abstraction severely impedes performance and versatility, I begin to question its practical value. By the way, I have never had the need or the sudden urge to print text in a spiral (or for that matter, at any orientation other than 0 and 90 degrees). William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University