Re: [Gnome-print] Re: [Gimp-print-devel] An introduction to gnome-print(fwd)

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris kaplinski com>]

On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Robert L Krawitz wrote:

>    Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 15:53:09 +0200 (CEST)
>    From: Lauris Kaplinski <lauris@kaplinski.com>
> 
>    > > AFAIK there is still no way to acess underlying rendered buffer in
>    > 
>    > Nope, nor will there be for an important reason - the PostScript
>    > rendering model is designed to work with raster *and* vector
>    > devices.
> 
>    And that exactly IS the reason you cannot do anything advanced in PS, but
>    have to render HUGE clent side bitmaps from almost everything.
>    P.S. Plotters usually cannot print bitmaps too - why there are image
>    operators at all - pixels could also been drawn as tiny vector boxes ;)
> 
> Why exactly do you need to access the underlying rendered buffer at
> all, anyway?  For raster printers, it's not likely to look anything
> even remotely like a bitmap in any format you've ever seen, anyway.

To do special effects server-side, of course :)
Alpha, fractals, desaturation & similar color effects, lens,
etc. etc. Implementing not-yet-seen font types etc.
PS has nice complete language, but it does not help, if graphic buffer is
not accessible. So everybody keeps transfering bitmaps along network. And
do not even think adding all possible operations to PS directly - always
somebody somewhere will come out with something new :)
The turing-completeness of PS language is good - but it can be made better
:)

As of raster, it can always use some nice intermediate format (I do not
know the correct name, but couldn't the one of eye pigmens used?) plus
access methods for RGB.

Lauris