Re: Heated agreement? (was) Re: Canvas shortcomings

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Mark wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Martin Sevior wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 19 Jun 2001, Mark wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Martin Sevior wrote:
> > >
> > > > It seems to me that we're in heated agreement that there should be a set
> > > > of virtual primitive functions that call arbitary backend graphics
> > > > contexts. Right?
> > > Well, I posted some messages too, so I don't know if the debate was
> > > limited to three points of view in total agreement.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure why this is on a public list. Why don't you three e-mail each
> > > other and figure out a solution. The general feeling I get from this
> > > discusion is one of insolence and volutary ignorance.
> > Well I didn't know there was going to be a debate until I saw it on the
> > list. I just joined in like you. 
> >
> > I'm sorry for implying you agreed with me. That's why I put the "?" on the
> > subject line.
> >
> > Regarding willful ignorance, would you care to adress why a pure
> > postscript solution is better than a virtual Front End with a variety of
> > backends (Postscript amongst them.)
>
> If they provide the same funtionality, there is no difference, except you
> are making an unecesary abstraction. The more useful abstraction I think
> is at the device level, that is having a common rendering API in which you
> can use difference device contexts.
>
> > My experience with AbiWord is that a relative simple set of graphics
> > primitives enables a workable driver for a diverse set of outputs.
> >
> > I think trying to do the same for a postscript interpreter would be much
> > harder and almost certainly slower.
>
> Apple has showed me what is possibly with display postscript. I don't know
> whether it is modified or not. My guess is they used the code aquired from
> NeXT and teaked it to make Quartz. I haven't examined an implementation so
> I'm not certain of this. In Quartz it appears the the windows managed by
> the system are also done in postscript. They do quite a neat trick with
> the window that is minimized, making the window warp into the dock.
>
> I'm not sugesting we need this level of performance, indeed that might
> take some time to accomplish, but that it is possible to be quite
> successful with the postscript model.
>
> Mark

Apple doesn't use Postscript in MacOS X, but PDF. That's why the PDF 
viewer is only 200k documentation and data included.
NeXTStep/OpenStep and GNUStep use a Postscript-based rendering, and for 
the record X Window's graphics model is based (/modelled/copied) on 
Postscript (circa 1987, IIRC).

I won't say more, because I don't know more ;)

Cheers
--
/Bastien Nocera
http://hadess.net