Well, this is an issue that's about a decade old. There has been occasional discussion about the issues over the years...
The architecture of DX certainly supports it. But some "programming" would be required to create an appropriate module or to enhance an extant one. It was never done in the commercial days only because it was a lower priority compared to other requirements. Thinking about it as an Export format would be easier than than an alternate renderer, but incomplete. To prove the point, both have been done by DX users over the years. A place to start would be the Export module, specifically for VRML. The issue is that DX and the DX renderer supports many more types of geometry than Postscript (or VRML) supports. While Export could accept any DX object, only a subset makes sense for the target format. The problem with thinking about it only as Export implies that you still need to define some simple default view. Although not ideal, you can allow a user-defined Camera with the default being AutoCamera (i.e., like Render). This, of course, is different than with VRML, which is designed for an interactive (geometric) viewer. Another issue is with fonts. As you may know the DX renderer doesn't know anything about fonts. Thus, like calligraphic systems, it uses renderable geometry (stroke or polygon fill), which is why text output in images is what you have observed. But for some cases, higher-level information is available at render time, which could be identified for Export. One example would be text as screen objects such the output of Caption. If memory serves, Export of VRML does this. But I don't recall if it is for output of Caption as 2d text or output of Text as 3d text stored as VRML text... Eelco Van Vliet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>@opendx.watson.ibm.com on 04/06/2002 09:08:04 AM Please respond to [email protected] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: <[email protected]> cc: Subject: Re: [opendx-users] Postscript rendering This I question that I was also wondering about. I would like to add to that: is it possible to export a vector plot to real postscript format instead of a bitmapped postscript. This also would greatly improve the quality of vector plots. Hopefully somebody has the solution. Regards Eelco van Vliet On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Richard Guenther wrote: > Hi! > > I'm looking for a way to teach DX to render into a postscript file > instead of an image. This way I'd like to preserve objects like > lines and text instead of turning them into pixel representations. > This would greatly enhance quality of printed images. > > Is this already possible? [I see the render module has a format input, > but from documentation I see this is currently unused] > > If not, is the rendering abstracted enough to support an additional > software renderer with postscript as destination? > > Any other ideas to improve especially font rendering for hardcopies? > > Thanx, Richard. > > > >
