PostScript output from Arachne is anyway overlaid module, so it doesn't
eat too much memory.
No, I don't have PostScript printer. But at university, I traded adding
PostScript output to my browser for passing kind of "exam" (you know,
the second thing than exam, I don't know what's English name for it:
some lectures are completed by passing exam, and some by completing some
other task). The lecture was "text processing" ... and PostScript was
the main topic ;-)
PostScipt printers are only real standard for graphical printing, but
they are very expensive, as availability of Windows drivers became more
important than standard-compliance. Well, software drivers for various
hardware are not entirely bad idea - only if they were platform
independent... :-(
There is free PostScript interpreter with drivers for most printers
typicaly used with PCs, and it us called GhostScript. Some older version
exists even for DOS, but its main purpose is to serve as default printer
driver in Linux: most printer output from all Linux applications is
PostScript, and if you send this PostScript to Linux print command
("lpr"), ghostscript is automagicaly invoked to print graphical output
to your printer. As side effect, you can preview ANY graphical output
from any application using GhostView, and then just click on "Print"
button, and you will really get *exactly* what you have seen - something
like high resolution hardcopy - which is not true for many Windows
so-called WYSIWYG applications... additionaly, you can convert plain
ASCII to nice PostScript output quite easily too (a2ps). And once you
have .PS of some document, you can embed it to another document,
including scaling and whatever - PostScript is simply the only true open
standard for vector graphics - the bad thing it is too complex for most
appliacations. It is very easy to write PostScript, it's like HTML -
you can do it by hand - but it is very hard to read PostScript (just
like HTML...). This is why Microsoft's binary formats rule the world -
they are more or less just memory-images of certain applications, which
makes such applications extremely easy to write, unlike applications
reading human-readable formats like HTML or PostScript :-(
The worst problems with PostScript are that: 1) font metrics is
different from let's say X11 or Arachne's bitmap fonts, so to generate
correct PostScript which contains more than lines and bitmaps, application
has to locate and read some "Adobe Metric Files" :-( 2) only character
set which is supported by all applications and by GhostScript is
ISO-Latin-1, which is driving me mad, as I would need ISO-Latin-2 for
Czech language. There is one Polish (in .pl, they also use ISO-Latin-2)
tool called "ogonkify", which can emulate ISO-Latin-2 accents in
PostScript output from Netscape - but this is not usable when printing
from Arachne or let's say StarOffice 5.2 (which otherwise supports both
Microsoft's .DOC and .XLS, and Czech Language - but which is not
likely to be accepted by people like Arachne user group, because it
is something like ~70 MB download and it requires you to have
400 Mhz CPU and 128 RAM to be able to do at least something - but on
the other hand, it is free download from www.sun.com... and it allows
you to completely avoid Microsoft Office ;-) Which is especially when
doing business online, because all stupid lawyers and sales departments
worldwide consider .DOC to be only existing document format ... :((((
Anyway, I will keep PostScript output, and I would like to improve it,
to include also images, not only plain text, and to read real Adobe
Font Metric files. It will be there mainly for Linux users.
For DOS users, I am planning to return to concept of lightweight
alternative CORE.EXE builds, available as APM packages. Is it ok for
everyone ?
--
Michael Polak: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Arachne Labs: http://arachne.cz/
My mobile phone - up to 160 characters: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
