Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!phri!roy From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: string concatenation (efficiency) Keywords: PostScript strings efficiency Message-ID: <3372@phri.UUCP> Date: 7 Jul 88 22:24:20 GMT References: <2564@ihuxy.ATT.COM> <4059@adobe.COM> <2574@ihuxy.ATT.COM> Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY) Lines: 26 In article <2574@ihuxy.ATT.COM> nowlin@ihuxy.ATT.COM (Jerry Nowlin) writes: > How important is efficiency in PostScript? A related question which has been nagging at me for a while is how to decide how to split the computational complexity between the printer and the PS-generating program. For example, let's say you wanted to draw a black-filled arrow at a 45-degree angle. One possibility would be to use a "arrow" routine like the one shown in the PostScript Tutorial (blue book) to draw an arrow aligned with the coordinate axis and precede it by "45 rotate" to change the coordinate system. Another possibility would be to compute the coordinates of the verticies of the arrow in the current corrdinate system and just do a series of linetos followed by a fill. In the first example, you're letting the printer do the coordinate transformations. In the second, you do them yourself. Similarly, you might have a choice between "/inch {72 mul} def 0.5 inch 0.5 inch lineto" and "36 36 lineto". The decision as to which is better depends on the relative speeds of the printer and the machine on which the PS-generating program is runs. Clearly, a Macintosh producing PS code for a PrintServer-40 has different tradeoffs from a Cray producing code for a LaserWriter. How does one decide? -- Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net "The connector is the network"