World: r3wp

reading your Synapse link reference - actually that is the quesiton 
of POV, for me the first paragraph has completly reverse meaning 
"The advantage of using PostScript is that Synapse EMR can display 
them nativey, and does not use PDF for printing.". I think that most 
ppl and platforms do have PDF Reader of some form, which means - 
I've got a preview mechanism, avoiding user to easily modify the 
output.

I will read the link, thanks, hopefully I get different perspective 
on that ...

Shortly you can say, PS is a language (used by professionals describing 
output in a very precise way) and PDF is a document format.

the problem si the preview ...

pekr, the advantage of using the PS dialect is that it can be fed 
directly to a postscript printer. This enables printing in all versions 
of REBOL. PDF needs to go through an external PS conversion program 
to do the same.

is Tex and PS anyhow related? I have heard Tex is very precise too

Pekr: from the geomol's link: "A PDF file is actually a PostScript 
file which has already been interpreted by a RIP and made into clearly 
defined objects. These objects are viewable on screen not in code, 
but in visual objects that everyone can see."

TeX is a markup system, kind of like HTML. you can produce PS documents 
from TeX files.

Yes, it might be a bit difficult for end-users to preview PS (unless 
you use Mac OS X or the like), where PDF might be easier to preview, 
because "everybody" now-a-days has Acrobat Reader.

Henrik - 95% of everythin I want to print, goes via preview first. 
The need to install GSview or something like that is total problem 
(because of already current penetration of Adobe Readers, I regard 
it being a solved case :-)

PDF is nice for distribution, while PS is great for direct printing.

OK

pekr, of course you want to preview it. that's the current disadvantage 
of postscript.r, but if you are printing tonnes of graphical labels 
or cards, postscript.r is excellent for that.

something with clearly defined graphics, maybe with a few varying 
text fields.

the advantage of maybe not so precise PDF system comes into equation, 
once you need more abstract thinking, e.g. sending docs around, adding 
comments, electronic signatures etc.

Henrik - would it be difficult to create AGG based preview?

I tried and failed, but I might have used a wrong approach. Graham 
has done some PS previewing in a demo.

the problem is coordinate systems and that fonts do not scale linearly 
in AGG.

ah, yes, of course ... yesterday's talk here with Cyphre ...

PDF is basically a compiled PS document. Requires less "brainpower" 
to display.

The postscript dialect give you very precise control of the output, 
but it's also maybe too low-level for many jobs. Dialects should 
be build on top of my postscript dialect (where you don't think in 
PS coords), and that should be easy to preview with REBOL/View (using 
DRAW).

geomol, I think that it should be kept at a low level. This way I 
or someone else can build a library of standard things on top of 
it to generate formatted pages, tables, formatted paragraphs and 
such.

just installed Gsview - I thought it is much bigger. it seems fine 
...

Henrik, yes, the postscript dialect should be low-lever as it is 
now. It's a fine base for further development. You can use it directly 
as you do, or someone could build new dialects producing postscript 
dialect output, which then can be made into final PostScript. (If 
you know, what I mean. Difficult to explain.) :-)

yes, it can become very powerful. one could actually build a system 
like LAYOUT this way to build PS documents.

Exactly!

in fact, I think it would be a good idea to coordinate this, in case 
someone wants to start building such stuff to avoid duplicate or 
overlapping efforts.

I see, there's an online ps2pdf converter here: http://www.ps2pdf.com
(Haven't tried it.)

ps2pdf is also a command (I think included with Ghostscript): http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/AFPL/6.50/Ps2pdf.htm

Pekr, what about making a small REBOL program, which can load postscript 
dialect txt-file, convert it to a .ps file, then call ps2pdf and 
finally call a PDF-viewer (Acrobat Reader) to see the result. You 
could also include a button to send the .ps file to a printer. Then 
you'll have PostScript with preview and all (also under Windows).

Also, someone could take the postscript dialect, and instead of producing 
PS output, actually use the PDF dialect to produce PDF output. That'll 
also give preview of postscript dialect source files.

Geomol, here's PDF dialect too, so what about making PS and PDF dialect 
compatible? Then you need not some external convertor.

yes, that's what I was thinking :)

Rebolek, :-) I haven't got the time to do everything! You do that 
part! :-)

(Also I'm on OS X, so I don't have the preview problem, because the 
OS auto convert to PDF, if I'll like to see a .ps file.)

geomol:)) OK but if I will, who's going to finish this? http://bolek.techno.cz/pix/app/request-color.png
;-)

Nice! :-) We need more than 24 hours in the day! Who can help us 
with that? ;-)

nobody on AltME I think :) Everybody's busy :)

I'm writing down some preliminary ideas for coordination...

Rebolex, that's such a nice target for liquid... is the code anywhere?

(oops I don't know how the x got there... I meant Rebolek)

maxim: what's nice target for liquid? you mean my hsv/rgb color requestor?

yep

especially using the up and comming liquidGL which plugs liquid direcly 
within the GLayout dialect

Perhaps we need a little print-spooler in a multi-user environment? 
May be a good job to solve using REBOL. It should be able to receive 
printjobs from plenty of users at the same time (using multi-threading 
much like the way Apache serve multiple users with web-pages) and 
then send the jobs to the printer one at a time. Maybe someone already 
did it in REBOL? Or if there is a server at hand, just send the jobs 
to the spooler in the server. I'm not too familar with spoolers. 
Will they leave the PostScript printjob as it is, and just send it 
to the printer? I could figure, that Windows spoolers would like 
to change the PS into something else using a print-driver.

I wrote a very small one, about 2 kb in size with a GUI. I can't 
remember, but I think it uses Rugby.

I made it for a very specific purpose (as one would do in REBOL), 
so it may have to be rewritten.

I don't know if this software has been noticed:
http://www.cenon.info/frame_gb.html

Tiny progress .. my dialect can now put multiple text boxes on one 
page, and produce the same output in PS and draw.  Now to find some 
PS text justification routines.

is there someone who have an idea for printing in rebol on a dot 
matrix printer ? i have to pilot it for printing a pre formated bill 
for dental care.  If anybody see what i mean..  I was wondering about 
how to do it in rebol, by passing by a markup langage but i dont 
know how it work.  if anybody got an idea...