Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!chilli.Berkeley.EDU!elm From: elm@chilli.Berkeley.EDU (ethan miller) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Is DTP Dead? Message-ID: <31661@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 2 Oct 89 22:58:03 GMT References: <8910020315.AA06255@std.com> <1476@intercon.com> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: elm@chilli.Berkeley.EDU (ethan miller) Organization: Berkeley--Riots 'R Us Lines: 43 In article <1476@intercon.com> amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes: %There are two approaches I can think of that can overcome this barrier, and %I don't like either of them :-). They are based the idea that the document %should be readable and comprehensible if treated as line printer text, but %have more structure if interpreted by a smarter piece of software. UNIX %does something like this with nroff output, which underlines by using %"underscore-backspace-character" sequences, and boldface by using "character- %backspace-character" sequences. Both of them look fine on a printer or a %CRT, but a screen viewer that knows how can do appropriate things and show %real underlining (or italics) and boldfacing. So what's wrong with writing a PostScript interpreter that produces line-printer text? It's always much easier to reduce the complexity of a document than increase it. If you don't have proportional spacing, you get regular spacing. If you can't switch fonts, everything is in the same font. Drawings get simplified or just not printed (it can't be worse than before, with those horrid ASCII drawings). Tables can be simulated pretty easily. This is no different from what nroff does; it's just that the input language is much less human-readable. %In my opinion, what we need is a simple text-like format that can be printed %off or viewed on a dumb CRT, but that can also be postprocessed into %PostScript or whatever else (this adds extra flexibility, as well--I could, %for example, print RFCs in Garamond Light instead of Times Roman or Courier). As I said above, I think the reverse is true. Let the document creator define a "preferred" style for printing out, and if people can't do that, then convert into line-printer style. %The bigggest problem is graphics. You just can't do graphics on a line %printer (aside from Snoopy calendars :-)). You might be able to do something %with approximating line drawing with +, -, and | (the way the RFC's do now) %and some rules for turning them back into lines and boxes, but anything %more complex is going to be a bear. Indeed. Converting from PostScript into line-printer text is tough, but much easier than getting a good laser-quality drawing from + and |. ethan ================================= ethan miller--cs grad student elm@ginger.berkeley.edu #include{...}!ucbvax!ginger!elm "I like the Austrian way better." -- Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.