World: r3wp

Or will they have R#?

(bad joke, but I wouldn't be surprised)

Henrick print PS files only works if the printer has PS support. 
Not every printer has this, and Apple move NextStep from PS to PDF 
because the PS rendering engine of Adobe is expensive. So PS printing 
will only work for PS printers. I think that is sort of ok, but not 
sure everyone has a PS printer.

Not to discourage you. I think PDF is more universal and the PDF 
viewer can print to any printer, inkjets and lasers.

Also OSX can print PDFs directly, it can even render directly to 
any media, because it includes a PDF render in the OS.

In other platforms this is not that easy. You need that PDF renderer 
in the middle to be able to print ot inkjets.

I get lots of end-users (typically on Windows) asking me about PDF, 
with zero enquiries on PS. I'd go so far as to say that very few 
non-technical folks have even heard of PS these days.

I lean toward PDF too, but the dialect is not much fun to use, it 
can take a long time to load, and you have to preview it before printing, 
not too mention versioning issues. Thats why I had been looking for 
a BMP printing solution. I was considering using PS for printing 
only images directly to printers, which would still be nice--mainly 
for non-win OS's. I think this would be much easier to impliment. 
I dont know squat about post script, but it could potentially be 
just a hack.

you can use ghostscript to print pdf too afaik.

As I said in the pdf maker group ... postscript is a much easier 
thing to do than pdf.  I could then do high resolution graphs in 
postscript, and then use ghostscript or other utilities view and 
print.  Conversion to pdf is another possibility.

This is the unix way - lots of utilities to massage a format from 
one to another .. and not necessarily have the one product that acts 
as a swiss army knife.

printing to html and then printing to printer is just not good enough 
for many things.

this is a simple guide to postscript .. I read this the other day, 
and was programming in postscript the next.

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/programming/postscript/postscript.html

Graham - either give me native rebol post script viewer, or forget 
it. I will not install ghost script - being there, done that. Because 
- today, in corporate sphere, there are two output interfaces - browser, 
or PDF Reader - noone will install anything else. I do agree that 
to get things right using html/css in cross browser manner may be 
pretty difficult task, but imo that postscript should be somehow 
- hidden?

Pekr, this discussion is not for you.

It's for those of us who want high quality printed output.

ah, how is that?

So, I suggest you just ignore this group.

I just state obvious, working for company with 3000 plus pcs, seeing 
trends from companies as SAP and IBM. If that is not relevant indication 
for you, then well ...

ok, I live this group, as I don't understand your arogancy

Nope .. it's not relevant to me.

live=leave

but maybe then it is not to Ashley even - reading what he thinks 
:-)

I have no wish to defend my desire to see a postscript emitter.  
I only wish to see it done by people who have a mutual interest. 
 If you don't think it is of interest, please do not post negative 
comments.

Here's a first attempt at drawing postscript and then converting 
to pdf ... http://www.compkarori.com/emr/growth.pdf

why negative. It is because you read is as a negative. My reaction 
translates to - if PS is good thing to have, then let's have it, 
but then it would be good to have native rebol ps viewer (in AGG) 
or there will be a trouble, if such a thing is dependant upon external 
viewer. And that is my experience here and I can guarantee you, that 
in terms of our big corp it would be a problem. But enough, do what 
you think is best ...

This might be of interest to Robert and Jaime who have new babies 
!

If I get time, I'll see if I can create a web service that turns 
growth data into CDC chart.

Both PostScript and PDF ref. manuals are found on www.adobe.com. 
I took a quick look and found out, that PDF is mainly a document 
format incl. things as hypertext links and logical structure information 
for document interchange. Postscript's primary application is to 
describe the appearance of text, graphical shapes, and sampled images 
on printed and displayed pages. It makes good sense producing PostScript 
from REBOL to enhance printing abilities, and if it's much easier 
than pdf (as Graham points out), there is good probability of success. 
And supporting PostScript doesn't exclude pdf. We can have both, 
and it's two different things with different goals.

Thank you.

One of the main reasons I suggested it is the high likelihood of 
success as you pointed out.

(as a world master here) First, Pekr, I can see how Graham interpreted 
some of your comments as negative ("Graham - either give me native 
rebol post script viewer, or forget it. I will not install ghost 
script..."), and I don't think he's being arrogant. I understand 
your point about wanting people to spend effort on things that are 
valuable to REBOL, but what's valueable to each of us is *completely* 
different in many cases. 


I hope you two can stay on good terms, because you're both valuable 
to the community.

(as a regular REBOLer) I've thought about doing the PS thing, because 
I hoped it would help printing support (and OSX uses DisplayPS, right? 
NeXT did too.). I also thought it would be a cool example, because 
of REBOL's Forth heritage that is very PS like (though I think someone 
once said that PS was *not* based on Forth..whatever). 


It shouldn't be too tough--I even have a couple PS book on my shelf 
if people need something looked up--but, like Pekr, I doubt the general 
practical usefulness for the average REBOL app user without a "full 
stack" of PS tools. That doesn't matter if you want it for yourself 
though, or we can bundle things into a distro for those who want 
it.

Gregg, OSX moved from PS renderer of NeXT to a PDF one. This was 
to save money from licensing the PS engine from Adobe. Currently 
PS is converted to PDF by third party tools. PDF on the other hand 
is direct.

Ahh, thanks for the info.

I thought about this subject yesterday night and yeah, it would be 
nice to be able to do "anything and everything" in Rebol and PS does 
offer that. Besides the kind of charts that Graham showed, things 
like wrapping/flowing text around graphic images would be useful. 
Of course at some point I would most likely convert it to pdf through 
Distiller. 

I totally agree that good clean output is essential. My last programming 
foray in PS was some 16 years ago. At that time it was the only way 
to go for me. I suppose that alone shows the staying power of PS.

Gregg, it's like cgi... unless you've got a web server, cgi is a 
waste of time for you.  If I have a web service that uses a postscript 
dialect to create a postscript image, and then uses ghostscript to 
convert to pdf .. well, that is useful to those running web services, 
but a waste of time for those who don't.

That's why we call them domain specific languages .. they're not 
for everyone, right!

Yup.

pekr, reading your comments seem to focus on a PS viewer. This is 
completely uninteresting to me. I want tools that are native to REBOL 
to allow me to print graphics directly to a printer with the fewest 
amount of 3rd party tools. How many shrinkwrapped apps out there 
need third party tools for something as basic as printing?

I've got a colour laser printer on my network which I think supports 
postscript.  I presume to print a postscript file, I just send it 
to the ip address of the printer?

hum  good question.  I'd like to know this as well... anyone?

I have a jetdirect usb print server at 192.168.1.253

>> port: open/direct tcp://192.168.1.253:9100
>> insert port read %boys-0-36-length-weight.ps
>> close port

and I printed out my postscript file with no problems.

jetdirect print servers use 9100 for data, and 80 for the embedded 
webserver.

That was pretty easy ... create the postscript  file, and send it 
directly to the printer, or print server.

precisely

I wonder if we should use an existing dialect and modify it to product 
ps .. or create one from scratch.

Should we use pair! or not ?