> >
> >If I were sending around a drawing for comment, I would consider
> >using PostScript instead. Most everybody can print it, most any
> >graphics software can generate it. It's effectively read-only, but
> >whether that matters depends on what you're doing with it.
> >
> > Henry Spencer
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> I knew this thread was going to catch me sooner or later.
I mean it in the best sense when I say, "Good catch." Your expertise will be valuable on the list, and I hope you continue to post when the subject interests you.
> May I suggest PDF? PDF is postscript, the diffrence is that postscrip
> has loops and control logic. PDF gets arround this by using a table to
> point to re-usable entries. Adobe makes a program called "Distiller."
> that is actually a suite of programs. One sits on the computer and
> looks to the OS as a "Printer." I use this to capture web pages to PDF
> booklets.
> As for Postscript itself, It is the only self undocumenting language. I
> should know as I worked at apple and wrote part of the test suites. You
> know that little anoying page that prints on power up? Well most of the
> laser printers shipped between 1992 and 1998 run my code on that
> page. (And yes, you can turn it off, there is a bit in the EErom to do
> that.)
>
> On the subject of CAD, this player piano company I am working for in
> KY has had no end to trouble opening OrCad. It got to the point where
> we are using graph paper to make important drawings that anyone can
> read. Who knows what formats can be read in even the next 5 years.
> Paper it is proven lasts at least 100 and we have 500 years worth of
> data to know the failure rates of paper formulas rather well.
>
> I am glad there are people that can still speak Mac only, and not
> starve. Then again at Apple I was the prima donna of postscript. Too
> bad the language is over 18 years old and has almost no bugs in it.
> Not to mention that it is Turing complete. I have written FFTs in it (To
> prove it could be done.) I have a full blown JPEG encoder/decoder suite
> that works in level 1 (Which did not have JPEG support.)
>
> Inkjets killed postscript. It adds 2 to 500 bucks onto the cost of a
> printer. Color support is spotty and is HW dependent. A few
> companies own the good color conversion routines. Much easier to do
> a simple RGB->CYMK table conversion in the OS than to delve into
> colorspaces that are so obscure they are named ABC/XYZ.
>
Eh? Seems to me that it's still alive. However, I take your point that the cost precludes its use in inkjets. (Did you mean $200 to $500?)
> Give me plain old DXF any day It is plaintext ASCII. I have ps tools for
> those somewhere too. I peeked ahead and somoene is proposing
> JPEG for vector graphics. Sure with the right Huffman tables one could
> build a set of 8 connected patterns and the drawing would not look too
> bad. All the Q tables do is to band limit the DCT. Mostly I use the
> PS/JPEG tools to fix damaged files.
>
[ I guess the Q continuum is rather limited... <g> ] ($0.25)
This is a valid concern for ERPS since inkjets will be the color printer of choice for some time. Do you know of any software that converts PS to DXF (or DWG)?
> The main problem and it has been mentioned here is that CAD wants
> to be 3D and that gets into solid modeling and tolerancing. Somehow
> all this got turned into a panacea --a magical solution that works for
> others.
I imagine that we could mostly use a 2D program like TurboCad, with maybe one (employed) member using SolidWorks or equivalent. Drawings could be printed and shared as hard-copy, converted to a format that TurboCad accepts, or viewed with the SolidWorks viewer. This is a freeware program analogous to Acrobat Reader.
Chris
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