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My only gripe is that the statement about pdf. This is a closed,and with-held format.

I agree with you completely! If only that damned Adobe would open the file specification. Obviously they are trying to get a stranglehold on the market and blight out the common man.

We need open programs that can read and create pdf files. Without such programs, the PDF format is useless.

So let's fight the power and boycott Adobe until they free the format!

However, while CorelDraw is definitely the king of vector drawing programs and one of the missing key apps still holding back Linux (no, xfig really does not cut it!)

I think I have to disagree with you there on CorelDraw being the king of vecot drawing programs.

I think that either Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand are much better than CorelDraw. Sure, they may not be free (actually they're far from it), but it's like comparing Photoshop to The Gimp. The Gimp may be free and a very good program, but I don't think anyone working at a design agency is going to skip the next upgrade of Photoshop to use The Gimp.

andy j. (who works for a design agency, and is using a linux right now, but will go back to the Mac to use the design programs)

p ress release

they are coming along. Just very slowly.

________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"

• http://www.wvWare.com/, maybe the best open source Word converter? Formerly "mswordview", it's a library and a front-end app, which is currently AbiWord's converter.
• word2x
• AbiSource, a company producing an open source, cross platform, comercial office suite. Their motto was "SHOW ME THE SOURCE!!!", which we had to scream at the March 1999 Linuxworld Expo in order to get their t-shirt.
• Adobe FrameMaker for Linux -- Not sure if it does Office, but it's a commercial word processor!
• VistaSource / ApplixWare -- Cross platform, partially open source, complete office suite and integrated development environment in the form of either a local app, or as a Java-based thin client plus app server architecture. Compare to StarOffice. My experience has been that you can send an un-convertable Office document to Applix's closely-monitored community support mailing list, and they will attempt to modify Applixware's import filters around it, and send you a patch. How cool is that?
• S un StarOffice. Very good as well. Complete office suite. StarOffice and Applixware are capable of replacing Microsoft Office for literally most people.
• Corel Wordperfect -- See also Corel's Linux distribution.
• KDE's KOffice -- Open source office suite.
• Freshmeat.net's index of office apps

• StarOffice for Dummies http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30490259 $14.99 (Save $1.00 over amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764505769/ ref%3Dsim%5Fbooks/103-4415661-32230 16

• Special Edition Using StarOffice, replaces htt p://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789719932/ref =sim_books/002-2291160-6260020.

• Applixware 5 Bible for Linux w/cd-rom http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30546347 $29.99 ($2 less than amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764534033/ qid%3D959095708/sr%3D1-3/002 -2291160-626002

• http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30400392 $14.99 ($1 less than amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672314126/ ref=sim_books/002-2291160-6260020

• Mastering Koffice for Linux w/ cd-rom http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/b ooksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=4LAQC2IL93&mscssi d=DLK6S46966S92MG1001PQUW78818A314&srefe r=&isbn=0782126529, replaces http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0782126529/ qid%3D959095770/002-0803865-4820213

I asked a friend about this and he said, "no, but the answer is yes, there are other ways....use other OCR engines, like Omnipage Pro or TextBridge Pro. Adobe Capture 3.0 is really really really nice, but is expensive. The searchability factor is the only reason OCRing is needed in most instances."

Some useful sites:
PDF Research
Planet PDF
AcroBuddies
Codecuts
PDF Zone
Adobe
Deja.com

You don't need to spend all that money for Adobe Capture 3.0 when you can buy Adobe Acrobat 4.0. This is NOT the adobe reader, but the full version of Adobe Acrobat with all the bells and whistles. A url is: http://www.adobe.com/store/product s /acrobat.html.

In addition, you can also buy the Adobe Acrobat Business Tools, which is a slightly broken but still functional version of Acrobat 4.0. That is available here: http://www.adobe.com/store/pro ducts/acrbustools.html.

You don't need to spend all that money for Adobe Capture 3.0 when you can buy Adobe Acrobat 4.0. This is NOT the adobe reader, but the full version of Adobe Acrobat with all the bells and whistles. A url is: http://www.adobe.com/store/product s /acrobat.html.

In addition, you can also buy the Adobe Acrobat Business Tools, which is a slightly broken but still functional version of Acrobat 4.0. That is available here: http://www.adobe.com/store/pro ducts/acrbustools.html.

ZDNet has a big thing on it, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview. And here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.

And while I'm in Slashdot-critique mode, is it really necessary to provide a link to a common company name? For example:

Rob Roy, CEO of Adobe, wrote an article about the Internet.

C'mon, like none of us know how to point to adobe.com.

--

ZDNet has a big thing on it, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview. And here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.

And while I'm in Slashdot-critique mode, is it really necessary to provide a link to a common company name? For example:

Rob Roy, CEO of Adobe, wrote an article about the Internet.

C'mon, like none of us know how to point to adobe.com.

--

ZDNet has a big thing on it, as well as new words from Judge Jackson. The Financial Times site, FT.com, has news and a Ballmer interview. And here's something from the Washington Post, talking about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. Enjoy.

And while I'm in Slashdot-critique mode, is it really necessary to provide a link to a common company name? For example:

Rob Roy, CEO of Adobe, wrote an article about the Internet.

C'mon, like none of us know how to point to adobe.com.

--

Hey, lots of Unix weenies like PostScript. :-)

I think you're a little off-base lumping PostScript in with Word. PostScript is hardly an "opaque format." It's a bona-fide programming language. Anyone is free to write a PostScript interpreter or a program that generates PostScript docs-- the specs for the language are available here.

(I was going to post this as an "AskSlashdot"...but here's as good of a place as any....)

The problem with the original question is that it's posted as an either/or option. Unfortunately, we deal with a mix of electronic and printed documents -- and you're like me you've paid for some of them in both formats.

My "AskSlashdot" is this:

1. Is there a cost-effective way of moving existing dead-tree documents into either HTML, PDF, or another searchable mixed text and graphics format?

I'll buy new documents in electronic *searchable* format when I can. For example, O'Reilly's Networking Bookshelf is easily worth the price I paid since I can now search it -- and everything else I have -- easily.

Yet, I have a four foot wide stack of technical documents and books that just isn't going to come with me on each plane trip. I'm not going to get rid of them -- they are still valuable -- but I have this creeping feeling that they would be more useful if they were searchable all the time...not just when I think of a specific text.

The available tools for capturing paper and converting it into searchable PDFs is costly, and is geared toward corporations that can justify the costs by the number of users. To me, a per-use licence of Adobe's Capture --

1. Adobe Capture - Prices

   Adobe Capture - Features

-- is just not cost effective.

If the document is already a text document -- even if it's in some wordprocessor I don't use -- generating PDF files is easy and cheap;

Print a document to a Postscript file, or create one. For example a simple text document is trivial;

1. enscript file.txt -p file.ps

Convert the resulting Postscript file to PDF;

1. ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf

Converting a paper document to PDF is also easy. Just scan the image and use tiff2ps or jpeg2ps to create the Post script file. The only problem is that the resulting PDF is a bitmap image and isn't searchable.

So, if you want it done, you're back to paying Adobe for Capture or some other nearly as expensive method.

Tell me I'm wrong...please!

Other references: PDF utilities on Freshmeat.

(I was going to post this as an "AskSlashdot"...but here's as good of a place as any....)

The problem with the original question is that it's posted as an either/or option. Unfortunately, we deal with a mix of electronic and printed documents -- and you're like me you've paid for some of them in both formats.

My "AskSlashdot" is this:

1. Is there a cost-effective way of moving existing dead-tree documents into either HTML, PDF, or another searchable mixed text and graphics format?

I'll buy new documents in electronic *searchable* format when I can. For example, O'Reilly's Networking Bookshelf is easily worth the price I paid since I can now search it -- and everything else I have -- easily.

Yet, I have a four foot wide stack of technical documents and books that just isn't going to come with me on each plane trip. I'm not going to get rid of them -- they are still valuable -- but I have this creeping feeling that they would be more useful if they were searchable all the time...not just when I think of a specific text.

The available tools for capturing paper and converting it into searchable PDFs is costly, and is geared toward corporations that can justify the costs by the number of users. To me, a per-use licence of Adobe's Capture --

1. Adobe Capture - Prices

   Adobe Capture - Features

-- is just not cost effective.

If the document is already a text document -- even if it's in some wordprocessor I don't use -- generating PDF files is easy and cheap;

Print a document to a Postscript file, or create one. For example a simple text document is trivial;

1. enscript file.txt -p file.ps

Convert the resulting Postscript file to PDF;

1. ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf

Converting a paper document to PDF is also easy. Just scan the image and use tiff2ps or jpeg2ps to create the Post script file. The only problem is that the resulting PDF is a bitmap image and isn't searchable.

So, if you want it done, you're back to paying Adobe for Capture or some other nearly as expensive method.

Tell me I'm wrong...please!

Other references: PDF utilities on Freshmeat.

I agree - PDF is not PostScipt ... but they are clearly kin. As Adobe says ...

"PDF relies on the imaging model of the PostScript ® language to describe text and graphics in a device-independent and resolution-independent manner. [...] A PDF file is not a PostScript language program and cannot be directly interpreted by a PostScript interpreter. However, the page descriptions in a PDF file can be
converted into a PostScript language program."

So, basically, PDF is a more structured version of PostScript with the programming components removed. For a more complete comparison of PDF & PostScript, please refer to section 2.4 of the Portable Document Format Reference Manual Version 1.3.

IMHO, the advantage to Apple is that, if they ever offer a Cocoa environment for Intel, a port of Quartz would provide a cross platform imaging model for developers to target and Apple wouldn't need to rewrite the interface APIs - just recompile. I'll grant that cross-compiling is a far cry from open sourcing. However, given Apple's trouble in convincing developers to migrate to Cocoa (hence the need for Carbon), this might just be the kind of move needed to get the ball rolling. If Apple is harboring any aspirations of being a player on the Intel side of the fence, it's going to take a lot more than the Cocoa APIs by themselves to make it happen.

Loved your work on the " Batman Forever " and " Batman & Robin " movie websites. Rumor has it that Warner Bros is buying up all variations of "Batman: Year One" (Rumored to be the next movie)...

Will you and the same design team work on that one, or is it too soon to tell?

Word is not the worst case here, Excel is even worse -- it has changed in almost every new release of MSOffice.

As for why this happens -- peer pressure, and that's exactly what Pauly talks about. If your client uses it, so will you (or at least you will have to convert to your customer's format before exchanging documents). In the recent past it was not even so much a question of tollerance, rather of no choice. Look at any of the Office Productivity Suites reviews at ZDNet or C|Net -- MS is almost always a clear-cut winner, even though most of the blows and whistles an average consumer will NEVER use (as a side note, wouldn't you think that most users could happily live with functionality of Word 2.0?).

As for what could be done to resolve it, I think that trying (whenever possible) to exchange HTML docs could be one solution, but you loose some control over the layout and won't be able to do any sort of document automation. And when it comes to a 3000+ page document -- you just gotta convince that customer not to use Word for this.

A few people had mentioned TeX and LaTeX, as well as SGML here, but I guess this is not the answer for Pauly, as his customers are not happy with it. OTOH, slowly educating them could help a lot. FrameMaker would be the best choice then: you don't need UNIX to run it (unless you'd want to try to convert your customer completely), get great documents, can convert them into SGML (with FrameMaker-SGML).

Just to add an air of surreality to the whole thing, the URL provided by the US DOJ on their website is wrong. The Proposed Final Judgment is actually here, and requires Adobe Acrobat.

For my money, the most interesting part is 5.A.i.(1) -- Microsoft will be required to provide on demand (during business hours):

...copies of all books, ledgers, accounts, correspondence, memoranda, source code, and other records and documents in the possession or under the control of Microsoft (which may have counsel present), relating to the matters contained in this Final Judgment...

(Emphasis added by me and is not in the original)

This I hadn't expected, although perhaps I should have in retrospect. We all know how MS feels about their Secret Sauce ... I wonder how they're going to react to this, even though 5.a.iii prohibits release of any information gathered from MS, "except in the course of legal proceedings to which the Plaintiff is a party (including grand jury proceedings), or for the purpose of securing compliance with this Final Judgment, or as otherwise required by law."

Myself, I hope the DoJ periodically pulls the source and compiles it themselves to see if it behaves exactly like the publicly available version(s) of Windows.

---

---

---

I believe that Ghostscript also reads PDF files, though I wouldn't swear to it, since I've never tried it myself.

Adobe does do a bit of portwork, albeit mostly Mac. You can snag the Acrobat Reader for Linux/Mac/Sun/AIX/etc from their website www.adobe.com.

You keep talking about how we need a massive reworking of technology to institute control of intellectual property. Guess what? It's already occurring.

I was helping a friend research document production for the web. Adobe has a new product out that allows you to sell encrypted PDF documents. Do you really believe that booksellers aren't going to adopt something similar? An enabling chip for your Rio? A thumbprint scanner on your keyboard?

Eventually, your access to copyrighted material will be contingent, absolutely, on your payment.

Not all net users, certainly not all AOL'ers are going to download this week's crack so they can look at copyrighted material.

Jon, read the other articles on Slashdot about copier machines and copyright. For crying out loud, if my bank can figure out how to print a check that can't be easily copied, don't you think that with nano-materials (or some such) books, magazines, and other printed materials will be rendered un-copyable?

This is not a 'virtual' vs. 'real' issue. This is a control issue. Creators of content have a right to control it. I don't subscribe to the 'information wants to be free' mindset because a lot of free information is crap, quite plainly.

I would pick the Physician's Desk Reference over Dr. Koop in a New York Minute, for example.

...to make my linux box run twice as slow like my windows box. I can use vi/emacs to do text processing...there are other apps that I would care about if they were being ported to Linux...

Your review is quite nice & interesting, lacking in only one thing: it is not full. If you are setting the goal to review just word processing software, than it should not matter whether AbiWord is a standalone app or not. And yes, if reviewing betas (and even pre-alfas as with KOffice) -- better review WP2000 than an outdated WP8.

LyX definitely should be on the least. It is great for many things, while so much different than any other package you might consider stacking against it. With its WYSIWYM vs. WYSIWYG metaphor it lets you put together a document in a much more efficient way without going into LaTeX/TeX/SGML.

You may also want to include Adobe's FrameMaker 5.5.6 Beta for Linux -- this is a great package as well. Bring power of desktop publishing with ordinary word processor ease of use -- all within a beta package set to expire some 10 months from now (31-Dec-2000).

import of equations and tables from Word

anchors! can you control what they are stuck to? how far will they float?

BIG DOCUMENTS! Framemaker still flew in a doc that was over 400 pages w/ many pics/code/equations/tables. Word chokes after about 50 pages of heavy tables/equations.

good HTML export. Tables/equations again...

Add Wordperfect and Framemaker to the next review.

-tim

There is a story on adobe.com about the restoration of the photos. http://www.adobe.com/prin t/gallery/lightstudios/main.html

Firstly, I don't care how much you try and claim otherwise, FrameMaker will always be more than a mere word processor. Find me a word processor that has the functionality of FM, and I may start using it...

Secondly, why not take your money, go buy your monitor and memory, and then download a free copy of FrameMaker for Linux. It's a beta, and the license expires at the end of 2000, but that should be enough for you to decide if you actually want to spend the money on the full product.

http://www.adobe.com/products /framemaker/fmlinux.html

One word: Framemaker

GUI, great layout ability, perfect for long complex documents.
I have seen the light, and I'm not going back...

It won't just be music and movies. Check out this white paper posted at Adobe's site. Adobe and others are working on standardizing content encryption schemes for PDF and other popular document distribution formats. According to the paper, they are working with IOMEGA and others to provide hardware that enforces the access restrictions. The emphasis here, as in CSS, is on access control as much as it is on copy protection.

All the articles have said that the outages occured earlier today. eBay, for instance, went down around 3PST/6EST this afternoon. ABC news, as far as I know, was never down; it was just hosting a story on the outages. The only sight that has been mentioned as being down that I still can't get to is Adobe.

You can find the format specification here

And the PDF 1.3 spec says:

The general idea of using an interchange format for final-form documents is in the public domain. Anyone is free to devise his or her own set of unique commands and data structures that define an interchange for final-form documents. Adobe owns the copyright in the data structures, operators, and the written specification for the particular interchange format called the Portable Document Format. These elements may not be copied without Adobe's permission.

Adobe will enforce its copyright. Adobe's intention is to maintain the integrity of the Portable Document Format as a standard. This enables the public to distinguish between the Portable Document Format and other interchange formats for final-form documents.

However, adobe desires to promote the use of the Portable Document Format for information interchange among diverse products and applications. Accordingly, Adobe gives copyright permission to anyone to:

• Prepare files in which the file content conforms to the Portable Document Format.
• Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in the Portable Document Format.
• Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format and displays the results, prints the results, or otherwise interprets a file represented in the Portable Document Format.
• Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of operators and data structures, as well as the PDF sample code and PostScript language Function definitions in the written specification, to the extent necessary to use the Portable Document Format for the above purposes.

The only condition on such copyright permission is that anyone who uses the copyrighted list of operators and data structures in this way must include an appropriate copyright notice.

although it also says:

This limited right to use the copyrighted list of operators and data structures does not include the right to copy the Portable Document Format Reference Manual [oh, well, I guess the Adobe police will be after me now for posting this...], other copyrighted material from Adobe, or the software in any of adobe's products which use the Portable Document Format, in whole or in part, nor does it include the right to use any Adobe patents.

I don't know whether any of those patents are used by xpdf, ps2pdf, Quartz, etc..

I take it there are no licensing fees for PDF - witness xpdf & ps2pdf, etc.

You can find the format specification here

and don't send plain email. you have to send a pdf file or a word document

For those of you without a copy of Word or WordPerfect handy (which I suspect may be a lot of us *nix users), it seems that Adobe has a free service which will turn any file into a PDF and e-mail it to you. You get 10 conversions per e-mail address you register with them. It accepts text and HTML uploads, and the output from an HTML file is pretty reasonable. (I had some trouble with a file with links in it though, so you might want to get rid of any before using this.)

Well, I agree with you, plain text should be allowed.

But there should be a way for you to generate pdf. Are you using a *nix OS? Then use enscript to generate postscript, and ps2pdf to generate pdf. (There probably are many other ways to do this, but I thought off this way first).

There are probably ways to do it on most other OSs, but I also know a more general solution. Use this service from Adobe - it let's you translate a limited number (10 ?) of files from many formats into pdfs.

I use it as a handy little Microsoft Word translator. Of course, I'm still stuck with pdfs. But at least I can read those easily.

Adobe will convert a PC or MAC word processing file to PDF in exchange for an email address.
Click Convert to PDF .

• As you say, which license would be picked is ambiguous, and has significant implications.
• Compare to Mozilla.

  Not all of Mozilla was Netscape's to give away. Notably bits from Bitstream, RSA (now Network Associates), and GUI stuff from sundry vendors.

  Even if Apple "open sources" all of their code, that doesn't imply that Adobe code is treated similarly.

  And I frankly worry more about Adobe doing "evil proprietary stuff" than I do about Apple. DPS, Type 1, Postscript, and PDF are more pervasive than MacOS. Greater danger lies there.

• What precisely is the "operating system?"

  Much of the old "GNU/Linux" controversies come out of the quite legitimate issue of which parts are Linux, and which parts are "GNU."

  Similarly, there has been much arguing over whether Internet Exploder is part of the "Windows Operating System."

  And the ambiguity strikes again here; "the whole OS" could vary from merely being some bits of Mach to being inclusive of MS Office and OS-X development tools, WebObjects, and OPENSTEP.

This is technology that Adobe licensed from Digimarc.. One of Digimarc's services they offer is you pay them some money and they report any use of your image they found on the web. By keeping an eye on my logs, I've noticed their crawlers perusing my server several times. Though all of the images on my site are mine (MINE MINE MINE!), I still don't like this idea.

I wonder what sorts of transformations these technologys are impervious to.. Since they're looking for on the web for watermarked graphics, presumably colour reduction (gif) and/or jpeg compression artifacts don't disrupt things. Will a slight blur or rotation? Can you embed an extractable watermark on white noise?

'invalid page fault' in three words:

Something Bad Happened.

Working in tech support, I was asked that question constantly. 'Just what is an invalid page fault? What's a general protection fault? What's a divide error? What's a fatal exception error?' .. well, hell if I know. It means Something Bad Happened.

Apparently, in early versions of Adobe's Type On Call program, an error was left in there by the programmers that literally said 'Something Really Bad Happened.'

Don't believe me? Check Adobe's knowledge base.

Mmmm .. tasty.

I'd also throw in Adobe InDesign. I already have Photoshop and Illustrator. on my NT machine, but I'd need Mac versions of those, too, if someone were kind enough to give me a G4. Oh, and one of those Wacom tablets, preferably the 12 by 18 one. Um, and maybe DSL service.

I am not greedy! You take that back.

Mmmm .. tasty.

I'd also throw in Adobe InDesign. I already have Photoshop and Illustrator. on my NT machine, but I'd need Mac versions of those, too, if someone were kind enough to give me a G4. Oh, and one of those Wacom tablets, preferably the 12 by 18 one. Um, and maybe DSL service.

I am not greedy! You take that back.

Mmmm .. tasty.

I'd also throw in Adobe InDesign. I already have Photoshop and Illustrator. on my NT machine, but I'd need Mac versions of those, too, if someone were kind enough to give me a G4. Oh, and one of those Wacom tablets, preferably the 12 by 18 one. Um, and maybe DSL service.

I am not greedy! You take that back.

Are we talking about the same Pagemill that's on sale on Adobe's web site in Mac and Win9x versions?

--
"I am Blair of EU^H^HBorg. Surrender your currency and prepare to be assimilated."

One intriguing point that nobody has picked up is the rather interesting convergence between the Internet, wireless and global positioning system. If you think you can avoid sales tax by accessing an out-of-country server, you can forget about it. The companies are already three steps ahead of any scam any individual can dream up.

My speculation is that since governments will make GPS compulsary for mobile phones (and thus PDAs) on the pretext of ensuring emergency rescue, they can tax the physical point of purchase (all mobile phone tracking stations can identify the cell of origin) and since all IP addresses can be matched to physical devices, they can thus ultimately match to an identity whether individual or business tax number. It is also not well known but a certain Redmond company has invested heavily in an electronic financial clearing house. Taxes may be onerous but at least they are open to public scrutiny (e.g. the Gore FCC telecom charge to fund internet access for disadvantaged schools). On the other hand, who notices the nickle and dime software "tax" paid on every single transaction? Witness Adobe's bright idea of charging a fee for every secure PDF file that is copied. Not to mention that your purchasing patterns will be recorded by some computer somewhere for later ... ummm .... analysis :-). As Sun's CEO noted, you can forget about any idea of privacy ... you can't escape little brother unless you shift to a place like Serbia which has been bombed back into the Stone Age.

The price of a free society may be eternal vigilance but at least the consumers should be informed about any "hidden" costs.

LL

Nothing in PostScript or PDF requires you to compress your images (or other data) at all. Learn a little bit about these technologies before getting all freaked out. The documentation is all on Adobe's "partners" web site.

Until it can run Photoshop, I wouldn't give it second look. Artsy nerds like me live in Photoshop. In fact, Adobe should make PhotoOS.
--

A standard for networked printers rocks. The de-facto lpd `standard' is not secure and is often incorrectly implemented. Check the Apple color laser printers for an example. They run their own lpd internally, and it doesn't talk too well to both NT and various Unices' default lpd. It also denies you the ability to manage its queue. Suck.

Oh, and PostScript level 3 includes the facility to send a URL to the printer and have the printer fetch the document (WebReady Printing, although I can't find anything in the language reference). Betcha most of y'all never noticed that. I just wish there was an independently controlled standard for page descriptions. Good laser printers would be much cheaper without the Adobe PS license. There are a few non-Adobe PS-compatible alternatives, but Adobe controls true PostScript. They do cool stuff for printers (job ticketing for large volume printers, lots of other workflow support, PNG support), but I really like independent standards.

Jason, ejr@cs.berkeley.edu, who thinks the reference to Intel (r) NT (at the bottom) is kinda funny...

A standard for networked printers rocks. The de-facto lpd `standard' is not secure and is often incorrectly implemented. Check the Apple color laser printers for an example. They run their own lpd internally, and it doesn't talk too well to both NT and various Unices' default lpd. It also denies you the ability to manage its queue. Suck.

Oh, and PostScript level 3 includes the facility to send a URL to the printer and have the printer fetch the document (WebReady Printing, although I can't find anything in the language reference). Betcha most of y'all never noticed that. I just wish there was an independently controlled standard for page descriptions. Good laser printers would be much cheaper without the Adobe PS license. There are a few non-Adobe PS-compatible alternatives, but Adobe controls true PostScript. They do cool stuff for printers (job ticketing for large volume printers, lots of other workflow support, PNG support), but I really like independent standards.

Jason, ejr@cs.berkeley.edu, who thinks the reference to Intel (r) NT (at the bottom) is kinda funny...