Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: PostScript Versus ASCII
Message-ID: <6378@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 2 Oct 89 11:29:59 GMT
References: <8909301233.aa05407@huey.udel.edu> <6373@ficc.uu.net> <629@wet.UUCP>
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 40

> I don't know how things are where you live, but in California if
> you don't have PostScript capability "at home" you go to the
> local copy shop with a diskette.

Do they accept either cpio or tar-format disks or cartridges? No? Well,
I'll just use my personal computer. How about 16-sector hard-format CP/M
diskettes, or AmigaDOS 880K floppies? This is only an option if you have
an IBM-clone (running Messydos, to boot) or a Mac in-house.

> Everything's in both forms, the information's identical, but the
> PostScript is much easier on the eyes.

1245(yes)P
1960(Postscript)P
128(is)P
2250(much)P
196(easier)P
1747(to)P
456(read)P
6(.)P

> Rather than argue about how widespread PostScript is, why not
> support software such as FSF's GhostScript that will make it
> unquestionably available to the neo-Luddites?

Matter of opinion. From my point of view folks who want to tie us down in
the paper age are the Luddites. I have enough slaughtered trees floating
around my office as it is. Hardcopy, to me, means "time to order another
bloody filing cabinet".

And I have a question about GhostScript. The support files and fonts in
this package fall under the Copyleft. If RMS and his buddies are being
consistent, that makes anything printed with GhostScript a derivitive work
and subject to the Copyleft. Is this so, or is RMS making a special
exception for the sake of expediency?
-- 
Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-'
"That is not the Usenet tradition, but it's a solidly-entrenched            U
 delusion now." -- brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor)