I too still have a NeXT Cube at home which I use regularly for TeX, light PostScript illustration / page-layout (14 years after NeXT and Adobe created Display PostScript, and one still can't get a.eps file to display directly w/o the need or a low-res bitmap preview) and PostScript programming.
I've found some LCARS programs written for Windows to be useful, 'cause the UI provides large, clear buttons, and for the most part, doesn't require dragging or multiple precise clicks to accomplish individual tasks.
At one point in time there was an active effort to codify / describe the UI, but I think that's stalled. Need to re-visit that.
Some possible advantages:
- ``chording'' (where one presses multiple buttons to achieve an effect---probably requires direct digitizer support though, so not achievable in the near-term).
- direct support for multiple virtual screens (assign an area in the UI for switching screens)
- two-handed use (though this isn't an advantage for a pen slate which is being cradled in an arm) - use one hand to activate commands, the other for selections / choices.
Preferrably ones which reduce interaction to just tapping, and possibly simple / small gestures.
dragging should be kept to an absolute minimum, and there should be (almost) no need to double-click/tap.
Unfortunately, with the demise of PenPoint, dedicated pen UIs have become almost non-existent AFAICT---this project sounds interesting. Anyone able to contrast it w/ Berkeley's Graphical User Interface Research Projects (GUIR) which touch upon pen-enabled UI? (i.e., SATIN, SILK &c.).
This project is a case in point---why does an app on a pen-system need a window title bar? You're not going to be moving it, and surely you're not going to be forgetting what you've just launched, right?
Menus at the top which drop-down are also bad on pen-devices---click w/ the pen, and they appear under your hand, you then need to move away, look, find where to click and move back---this is one of the things which I hate about Windows for Pen Computing.
One UI which I think merits development is LCARS (Library Computer Access and Retrieval System), the ``Okudagrams'' from Star Trek: The Next Generation and later. While there are some programs out there modelled on this (including some commercial products licensed by Paramount), all-too-often it devolves to mere ``eye-candy'' (Berkeley Systems' StarDate anyone?).
Here's hoping someone adds a suitable widget set to this project.
I'm setting up a Fujitsu Pen Slate which I just picked up now, and am loading software.... Some things are a bit skewed to the pen / graphic design angle, but....
1 - PDFS - XPDF / Adobe Acrobat Reader (or get Approval (good for filling out forms / annotations) for free from the IRS) Annotating.pdfs w/ the pen is a _lot_ easier / nicer than using a mouse / keyboard
2 - GNUCash (or Quicken) - I'd like an app small / fast enough to use at point of purchse though...
3 - Palm Desktop (though if Berkely Systems' StarDate works w/ the HWR on my Fujitsu Pen Slate I'm gonna use that;) I'm finally retiring my Newton if the next works out:
5 - LyX (the HWR actually works w/ the QT version compiled for Windows;) I think this could handle a family's needs to produce printed documents though...
6 - TeX / GhostScript - needed for above. Dirk Stuve's WinTeXShell actually works with / supports HWR / Pen Services;)
7 - Fractal Design Expression (need to look into the new Expression 3.0 though), FutureWave SmartSketch, and Macromedia FreeHand---did I mention I do graphic design? I guess a family would want Broderbund PrintShop or somehting like to that.
8 - Writer's ToolKit - since I got my Cube, I've felt that any computer which doesn't come w/ a dictionary is barbaric / uncivilized. WordWeb / Net are free though.
9 - Digital Camera software - suggestions? I'd like to get a camera and software for editing / managing photos---is there an iPhoto clone for Windows? I'd like to avoid Adobe PhotoShop/Deluxe/Elements though, don't much care for Adobe's idea of UI of late.
10 - CD Burner / Music / MP3 - the CD-RW I got came w/ Nero---hopefully this will work until Apple has iTunes for Windows available.
5,280 feet in a mile, or eight furlongs (a furrow's length, which is 220 yards, the distance a horse or ox can plough in before requiring a rest), but the mile is based on the stride of Roman soldiers (see recent discussions on this on usenet::comp.text.tex).
There are 8 pints in a gallon, 2 pints in a quart and, surprise! four quarts in a gallon.
Metric is an impersonal, arbitrary system w/ little relation to human measure / experience.
For example, the point system which you were maligning, while 72 pts. to an inch is a recent phenomenon (Warnock innaugurated it when he created PostScript since he knew all fonts would have to be re-created), there were 12 pts. (72.27 in an inch) to a pica, and if one measures in picas exclusively, then divisions of a page block are easy and don't get down into fractions---by contrast European specifications often have irksome decimals in them which are a nuisance (and they only rarely use the ``Q'', (quarter of a millimeter, ``kyu'' in Japan) as a type measure, so type sizes still get specced in points!
Similarly, Farenheit happens to capture the human ability to differentiate temperature, but one can have two items, both at a given celsius temperature which will feel to be different temperatures 'cause that measure is coarser.
96 dpi as a screen measure was set up for similar reasons (to allow even sub-divisions). Sadly, few programs honour the Windows facility for user-definable screen dpi---all-too-many are Mac ports hard-wired for 72 dpi:(
The arms were numbered and one of them functioned as a micro-manipulator---way cool.
I've always thought it rather a shame that the artificial limb thing wasn't touched upon in Victor Milan's _The Cybernetic Samurai_ (which had a character who read _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ well-nigh religiously---did do interesting things w/ her wheel chair though).
Reading usenet is outside of Apple's target market would be my guess as to why they don't---besides, one can always use dejaGoogle.
Most of the problems strike me as pretty esoteric---and I think it's a good idea Apple keeps to a reasonable core functionality so as to leave room for third-party development.
There is GNUMail though, for those with an itch to scratch;)
Actually, Apple recently (10.1, 10.2?) added support for Services in Carbon apps.
Unlike Cocoa, they have to be explicitly coded for this, but the hooks are there, and there's no excuse for things like InDesign not fully supporting them.
But as you noted, one merely needs a copy of VPC and appropriate Windows software to enable a Mac to do so.
Moreover, Adobe and Microsoft's inability to support anything other than the majority market share is something I try very hard to not concern myself with---while I use Adobe Acrobat at work (from time-to-time on a Windows box to access the functionality you describe, the remainder on a Mac so as to use printer-specified.joboptios settings and Enfocus PitStop preflight profiles), most of my pdfs are made using pdfTeX (and w/ hyperref I get bookmarks &c.) which allows one to access _all_ of the.pdf spec programmatically.
The remainder I make w/ pStill.app which supports PostScript specials so that one can insert hyperlinks &c. using a wee bit of PostScript coding;)
Mail.app works fine e-mailing files to my NeXT Cube;)
Seriously, lots of things have problems sending to / from AOL 'cause of their (non) support of MIME---when I want to send something to an AOL user, I use my AOL account---usually it works:/ the fault here is not w/ Mail.app (MIME was based on NeXTMail after all), but w/ AOL---take a look at keyword MIME on AOL to see how broken they admit to this being.
There were some pretty cool usenet clients for NeXTstep (AISTR it was NewsGrazer which innaugurated binary posts....), and NeXT^H^H^H^H Mac OS X affords a high enough level of app interoperability that one shouldn't lose anything in having a dedicated client. I'm pretty sure that newsreades for Mac OS X have been thoroughly discussed on comp.sys.mac.advocacy---you can check at http://groups.google.com
Find where I can buy a copy of an OpenType version of Zapfino for Windows which has the over 1,400 characters which Mac OS X does.... or someone who'll sell you the lovely sets of Hanja for even ten times what Mac OS X costs.
Go read up on NeXTstep, I've some material at http://members.aol.com/willadams and there's more at http://www.gnustep.org --- Services are quite nice, and have no pervasive equivalent in Windows.
an AC said: >Which you can't change how it's sorted, brilliant!
In NeXT/OPENstep one can---presumably this infelicity will go away for Mac OS X at some point in time---in the meanwhile, just use rBrowserLite which does have a pop-up menu for changing the sorting order;)
- TextLightning.app (shareware) - way cool fileservice which allows apps to open arbitrary.pdf files and get a (visual) formatted version of the text therein.
- sBook5 - nifty AI-based contact / note manager
- Zippist - drag-drop zip program
- Purgatory Design's Intaglio drawing program - AFAIK, the only OS X graphics program which fully supports AAT / ATSUI
- the QT port of LyX (this is way cool on Win32 too)
Un-cool software, which should have been cool includes:
- Macromedia FreeHand MX - this should've been a Cocoa version which was a successor to Altsys Virtuoso for NeXTstep. Instead we got a Carbon program w/ no Unicode or nifty type system support.
Stuff a new Mac can do which a Windows PC (default software install on both) can't:
- make a.pdf from anything one can print
- Services
- Miller column browser for filesystem navigation
- AAT / ATSUI - play w/ Zapfino in TextEdit
- $10,000 worth of fonts (including non-Latin ones)
- Mail.app (decent and safe mail client)
- iApps (iTunes, iMovie, iCal, iSynch)
- colour calibration which really works
By contrast:
- is there any app in a default Windows install which can take full advantage of the spiffy OpenType version of Palatino bundled w/ Windows 2000 or later? (bummer that has Ariadne swash caps instead of the original Palatino swash letters---only available in hot metal, though I did a digital font for a friend who has said letterforms;)
Moreover, if one adds in d/l'ing and installing free (libre) software, Mac OS X draws even further ahead w/ stuff like TeXShop (pdf editor lite!) and EquationService.app.
Agreed, and I can go back another generation or two w/ my main machine, a NeXT Cube w/ the 25MHz '040 upgrade board---still just 'bout the nicest platform for doing TeX work or PostScript programming, or light illustration work which wants custom PostScript strokes / fills.
A font for Tifinagh has already been done, as has a prototypical encoding scheme---see the Omega docs.
The problem is, the Unicode consortium sees that Berber is already set w/ Latin, as well as Arabic, and apparently feels that that's sufficient and hence there's no need for their native script.
Why should people care to use computers which don't accomodate their scripts?
I'm not arguing for cultural relativism here, but the mere consideration of reality vice fiction in the consideration of priorities.
Groups like GUST (the Polish TeX User's Group) have worked _very_ hard to get their languages / scripts / accents supported, and in certain instances (Boguslaw Jackowski's nifty LatinModern) have greatly benefited others as well---there's no need to crowd the bar w/ fictional things when people in the real world want to approach it (to mix a couple of metaphors).
Not only that, but there are real languages / scripts w/ millions of speakers (John Plaice used the example of Berber and Tifinagh at TUG2003) which aren't in Unicode yet---I really wish they'd call a moratorium on trivial fictional stuff until such time as serious, real-world needs such as getting slots for Tifinagh are addressed.
for consulting done for their law firm Seyfarth & Shaw?
I asked after billing my time done for consulting on the case of Monotype Corp. vs. Red Hat last year starting on Dec. 18. Submitted a bill at the first of the year, didn't hear anything for months. When I finally queried about this via e-mail, was told the law firm was waiting on payment from the insurance company first, so sent in a bill maked due net 30---still no response, so sent in a late notice via registered mail.
Not hard at all if one has followed the history of all of this and read the.pdf specifications---they're available on-line, in the same places as I have referenced the PostScript and Type 1 font format docs on my web site.
An AC said: >Quartz is not "Display PDF". Don't know where >you saw or why you decided to make up that >retarded name
It's a fairly standard descriptive term among NeXT users.
>Quartz uses the Generic PDF format as an engine >to Quartz.
What is ``Generic PDF''? There's PDF version 1.0 (Acrobat 1), v1.1 (Acrobat 2), v1.2 (Acrobat 3), v1.3 (Acrobat 4), v1.4 (Acrobat 5), etc. There's also PDF/X, which is being put forth as an ISO standard by an industry consortium.
>This was chosen over Display >Postscript for more reasons than simply >licensing costs.
Right, Adobe said that they simply couldn't have it.
>Apple had considered using the full PDF format, >but the costs were higher--generic PDF is free >to implement. They (Apple) did not invent generic >PDF, Adobe did.
Adobe created the PDF format, but there's no ``Generic PDF''. Apple did implement a subset of PDF capabilities initially, but there was no specific term for what they implemented / didn't implement before doing so (unless it was ``tricksy things which take a lot of work). Apple has steadily worked to improve this, and Panther / 1.3's pdf support now includes things like CoolShades which weren't supported before.
Free to implement? Are you saying Mike Paquette and all the other engineers at Apple to create PDF worked for free? (see Mike Paquette's posts to usenet:comp.sys.next.advocacy/hardware on how it felt to spend his first years at Apple after purchasing NeXT ``recreating my previous ten years of work at NeXT on Display PostScript''.
There's no licensing fee in implementing.pdf, but unless you're considering volunteer efforts like xpdf, it costs to pay the people to do the work.
Display PostScript _is_ PostScript (essentially Level 1, w/ most of the Level 2 extensions, plus some screen-oriented stuff).
As regards Quartz being a subset of.pdf---well, yes, they had to budget their engineering effort, but they've been adding to what's supported with each rev---Panther adds support for CoolShades (even defined in Pantone spot colors), and apparently hyperlink support is in the works as well.
One of the coolest hacks in NeXTstep was to add a ``Print'' button to an app's window using Interface Builder---it'd let you get a PostScript representation of said Window.
Vector UI has come and gone as a concept since the days of PenPoint---hopefully it'll come back again eventually.
No, Apple was forced to create Quartz (nee ``Display PDF'') when Adobe pulled out the rug from under them and renegged on their promise to provide (first) a free license for Display PostScript, then a low-cost one---this was what nuked Apple's ``Yellow Box'' strategy to have a free (then inexpensive) run-time for what are now called ``Cocoa'' programs. Adobe has a history of yanking the chains of DPS licensees---look how the license changed for DPS between NeXTstep 1 or 2 and v3---at v3, suddenly it was resolution limited to _less_ than 800dpi (seems a cottage industry had grown up around connecting NeXT boxes to imagesetters to function as RIPs)
Giving up Display PostScript cost _years_ of engineering effort (to develop Quartz), as well as effortless display redirection (no nxhosting), and going back to the requirement of.eps files having bitmap or PICT previews.
Slashdot Mirror
An excellent distinction.
.eps file to display directly w/o the need or a low-res bitmap preview) and PostScript programming.
I too still have a NeXT Cube at home which I use regularly for TeX, light PostScript illustration / page-layout (14 years after NeXT and Adobe created Display PostScript, and one still can't get a
William
I've found some LCARS programs written for Windows to be useful, 'cause the UI provides large, clear buttons, and for the most part, doesn't require dragging or multiple precise clicks to accomplish individual tasks.
At one point in time there was an active effort to codify / describe the UI, but I think that's stalled. Need to re-visit that.
Some possible advantages:
- ``chording'' (where one presses multiple buttons to achieve an effect---probably requires direct digitizer support though, so not achievable in the near-term).
- direct support for multiple virtual screens (assign an area in the UI for switching screens)
- two-handed use (though this isn't an advantage for a pen slate which is being cradled in an arm) - use one hand to activate commands, the other for selections / choices.
William
Preferrably ones which reduce interaction to just tapping, and possibly simple / small gestures.
dragging should be kept to an absolute minimum, and there should be (almost) no need to double-click/tap.
Unfortunately, with the demise of PenPoint, dedicated pen UIs have become almost non-existent AFAICT---this project sounds interesting. Anyone able to contrast it w/ Berkeley's Graphical User Interface Research Projects (GUIR) which touch upon pen-enabled UI? (i.e., SATIN, SILK &c.).
This project is a case in point---why does an app on a pen-system need a window title bar? You're not going to be moving it, and surely you're not going to be forgetting what you've just launched, right?
Menus at the top which drop-down are also bad on pen-devices---click w/ the pen, and they appear under your hand, you then need to move away, look, find where to click and move back---this is one of the things which I hate about Windows for Pen Computing.
One UI which I think merits development is LCARS (Library Computer Access and Retrieval System), the ``Okudagrams'' from Star Trek: The Next Generation and later. While there are some programs out there modelled on this (including some commercial products licensed by Paramount), all-too-often it devolves to mere ``eye-candy'' (Berkeley Systems' StarDate anyone?).
Here's hoping someone adds a suitable widget set to this project.
William
I'm setting up a Fujitsu Pen Slate which I just picked up now, and am loading software.... Some things are a bit skewed to the pen / graphic design angle, but....
.pdfs w/ the pen is a _lot_ easier / nicer than using a mouse / keyboard
;) I'm finally retiring my Newton if the next works out:
;) I think this could handle a family's needs to produce printed documents though...
;)
1 - PDFS - XPDF / Adobe Acrobat Reader (or get Approval (good for filling out forms / annotations) for free from the IRS) Annotating
2 - GNUCash (or Quicken) - I'd like an app small / fast enough to use at point of purchse though...
3 - Palm Desktop (though if Berkely Systems' StarDate works w/ the HWR on my Fujitsu Pen Slate I'm gonna use that
4 - Blade Software's NotateIt (general purpose note-taking software)
5 - LyX (the HWR actually works w/ the QT version compiled for Windows
6 - TeX / GhostScript - needed for above. Dirk Stuve's WinTeXShell actually works with / supports HWR / Pen Services
7 - Fractal Design Expression (need to look into the new Expression 3.0 though), FutureWave SmartSketch, and Macromedia FreeHand---did I mention I do graphic design? I guess a family would want Broderbund PrintShop or somehting like to that.
8 - Writer's ToolKit - since I got my Cube, I've felt that any computer which doesn't come w/ a dictionary is barbaric / uncivilized. WordWeb / Net are free though.
9 - Digital Camera software - suggestions? I'd like to get a camera and software for editing / managing photos---is there an iPhoto clone for Windows? I'd like to avoid Adobe PhotoShop/Deluxe/Elements though, don't much care for Adobe's idea of UI of late.
10 - CD Burner / Music / MP3 - the CD-RW I got came w/ Nero---hopefully this will work until Apple has iTunes for Windows available.
William
5,280 feet in a mile, or eight furlongs (a furrow's length, which is 220 yards, the distance a horse or ox can plough in before requiring a rest), but the mile is based on the stride of Roman soldiers (see recent discussions on this on usenet::comp.text.tex).
:(
There are 8 pints in a gallon, 2 pints in a quart and, surprise! four quarts in a gallon.
Metric is an impersonal, arbitrary system w/ little relation to human measure / experience.
For example, the point system which you were maligning, while 72 pts. to an inch is a recent phenomenon (Warnock innaugurated it when he created PostScript since he knew all fonts would have to be re-created), there were 12 pts. (72.27 in an inch) to a pica, and if one measures in picas exclusively, then divisions of a page block are easy and don't get down into fractions---by contrast European specifications often have irksome decimals in them which are a nuisance (and they only rarely use the ``Q'', (quarter of a millimeter, ``kyu'' in Japan) as a type measure, so type sizes still get specced in points!
Similarly, Farenheit happens to capture the human ability to differentiate temperature, but one can have two items, both at a given celsius temperature which will feel to be different temperatures 'cause that measure is coarser.
96 dpi as a screen measure was set up for similar reasons (to allow even sub-divisions). Sadly, few programs honour the Windows facility for user-definable screen dpi---all-too-many are Mac ports hard-wired for 72 dpi
William
Yes, Mann.
The arms were numbered and one of them functioned as a micro-manipulator---way cool.
I've always thought it rather a shame that the artificial limb thing wasn't touched upon in Victor Milan's _The Cybernetic Samurai_ (which had a character who read _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ well-nigh religiously---did do interesting things w/ her wheel chair though).
William
This is the default for NeXTstep---any explanation / history behind it?
I've deja-googled, but not found much which explains this....
William
http://www.adpartnership.net/DarkAdapted/
It's intended for astronomers so as to preserve their night vision, but is fully configurable.
Free too.
William
Reading usenet is outside of Apple's target market would be my guess as to why they don't---besides, one can always use dejaGoogle.
;)
Most of the problems strike me as pretty esoteric---and I think it's a good idea Apple keeps to a reasonable core functionality so as to leave room for third-party development.
There is GNUMail though, for those with an itch to scratch
William
Actually, Apple recently (10.1, 10.2?) added support for Services in Carbon apps.
Unlike Cocoa, they have to be explicitly coded for this, but the hooks are there, and there's no excuse for things like InDesign not fully supporting them.
William
But as you noted, one merely needs a copy of VPC and appropriate Windows software to enable a Mac to do so.
.joboptios settings and Enfocus PitStop preflight profiles), most of my pdfs are made using pdfTeX (and w/ hyperref I get bookmarks &c.) which allows one to access _all_ of the .pdf spec programmatically.
;)
Moreover, Adobe and Microsoft's inability to support anything other than the majority market share is something I try very hard to not concern myself with---while I use Adobe Acrobat at work (from time-to-time on a Windows box to access the functionality you describe, the remainder on a Mac so as to use printer-specified
The remainder I make w/ pStill.app which supports PostScript specials so that one can insert hyperlinks &c. using a wee bit of PostScript coding
William
No, it's not _exactly_ the same.
:(
It's not a top-level menu any longer.
It can't be torn off, it can't be popped up with the right-button menu either.
One doesn't get the rich set of default clients any longer so that COMMAND= is reserved to Webster.app's Define in Webster Service....
It was rare to find an app in NeXTstep which didn't support Services---lots in Mac OS X don't
William
Mail.app works fine e-mailing files to my NeXT Cube ;)
:/ the fault here is not w/ Mail.app (MIME was based on NeXTMail after all), but w/ AOL---take a look at keyword MIME on AOL to see how broken they admit to this being.
Seriously, lots of things have problems sending to / from AOL 'cause of their (non) support of MIME---when I want to send something to an AOL user, I use my AOL account---usually it works
There were some pretty cool usenet clients for NeXTstep (AISTR it was NewsGrazer which innaugurated binary posts....), and NeXT^H^H^H^H Mac OS X affords a high enough level of app interoperability that one shouldn't lose anything in having a dedicated client. I'm pretty sure that newsreades for Mac OS X have been thoroughly discussed on comp.sys.mac.advocacy---you can check at http://groups.google.com
William
Find where I can buy a copy of an OpenType version of Zapfino for Windows which has the over 1,400 characters which Mac OS X does.... or someone who'll sell you the lovely sets of Hanja for even ten times what Mac OS X costs.
Go read up on NeXTstep, I've some material at http://members.aol.com/willadams and there's more at http://www.gnustep.org --- Services are quite nice, and have no pervasive equivalent in Windows.
William
an AC said:
;)
>Which you can't change how it's sorted, brilliant!
In NeXT/OPENstep one can---presumably this infelicity will go away for Mac OS X at some point in time---in the meanwhile, just use rBrowserLite which does have a pop-up menu for changing the sorting order
William
- TeXshop (Apple Design Award winner---modelled on NeXT' TeXView.app --- add in EquationEditor.app to get NeXT's TeX eq -> eps Service)
.pdf files and get a (visual) formatted version of the text therein.
- Fugu - spiffy front-end to some sort of secure file transfer protocol
- Free Ruler (but I wish Mac OS X had user-definable logical screen dpi and that so many apps weren't hardwired to 72dpi)
- rBrowserLite - spiffy free FTP client / alternative file browser
- TextLightning.app (shareware) - way cool fileservice which allows apps to open arbitrary
- sBook5 - nifty AI-based contact / note manager
- Zippist - drag-drop zip program
- Purgatory Design's Intaglio drawing program - AFAIK, the only OS X graphics program which fully supports AAT / ATSUI
- the QT port of LyX (this is way cool on Win32 too)
Un-cool software, which should have been cool includes:
- Macromedia FreeHand MX - this should've been a Cocoa version which was a successor to Altsys Virtuoso for NeXTstep. Instead we got a Carbon program w/ no Unicode or nifty type system support.
William
Stuff a new Mac can do which a Windows PC (default software install on both) can't:
.pdf from anything one can print
;)
- make a
- Services
- Miller column browser for filesystem navigation
- AAT / ATSUI - play w/ Zapfino in TextEdit
- $10,000 worth of fonts (including non-Latin ones)
- Mail.app (decent and safe mail client)
- iApps (iTunes, iMovie, iCal, iSynch)
- colour calibration which really works
By contrast:
- is there any app in a default Windows install which can take full advantage of the spiffy OpenType version of Palatino bundled w/ Windows 2000 or later? (bummer that has Ariadne swash caps instead of the original Palatino swash letters---only available in hot metal, though I did a digital font for a friend who has said letterforms
Moreover, if one adds in d/l'ing and installing free (libre) software, Mac OS X draws even further ahead w/ stuff like TeXShop (pdf editor lite!) and EquationService.app.
William
Agreed, and I can go back another generation or two w/ my main machine, a NeXT Cube w/ the 25MHz '040 upgrade board---still just 'bout the nicest platform for doing TeX work or PostScript programming, or light illustration work which wants custom PostScript strokes / fills.
William
A font for Tifinagh has already been done, as has a prototypical encoding scheme---see the Omega docs.
The problem is, the Unicode consortium sees that Berber is already set w/ Latin, as well as Arabic, and apparently feels that that's sufficient and hence there's no need for their native script.
William
Why should people care to use computers which don't accomodate their scripts?
I'm not arguing for cultural relativism here, but the mere consideration of reality vice fiction in the consideration of priorities.
Groups like GUST (the Polish TeX User's Group) have worked _very_ hard to get their languages / scripts / accents supported, and in certain instances (Boguslaw Jackowski's nifty LatinModern) have greatly benefited others as well---there's no need to crowd the bar w/ fictional things when people in the real world want to approach it (to mix a couple of metaphors).
William
Not only that, but there are real languages / scripts w/ millions of speakers (John Plaice used the example of Berber and Tifinagh at TUG2003) which aren't in Unicode yet---I really wish they'd call a moratorium on trivial fictional stuff until such time as serious, real-world needs such as getting slots for Tifinagh are addressed.
William
for consulting done for their law firm Seyfarth & Shaw?
I asked after billing my time done for consulting on the case of Monotype Corp. vs. Red Hat last year starting on Dec. 18. Submitted a bill at the first of the year, didn't hear anything for months. When I finally queried about this via e-mail, was told the law firm was waiting on payment from the insurance company first, so sent in a bill maked due net 30---still no response, so sent in a late notice via registered mail.
Suggestions?
William
Not hard at all if one has followed the history of all of this and read the .pdf specifications---they're available on-line, in the same places as I have referenced the PostScript and Type 1 font format docs on my web site.
.pdf, but unless you're considering volunteer efforts like xpdf, it costs to pay the people to do the work.
An AC said:
>Quartz is not "Display PDF". Don't know where
>you saw or why you decided to make up that
>retarded name
It's a fairly standard descriptive term among NeXT users.
>Quartz uses the Generic PDF format as an engine
>to Quartz.
What is ``Generic PDF''? There's PDF version 1.0 (Acrobat 1), v1.1 (Acrobat 2), v1.2 (Acrobat 3), v1.3 (Acrobat 4), v1.4 (Acrobat 5), etc. There's also PDF/X, which is being put forth as an ISO standard by an industry consortium.
>This was chosen over Display
>Postscript for more reasons than simply
>licensing costs.
Right, Adobe said that they simply couldn't have it.
>Apple had considered using the full PDF format,
>but the costs were higher--generic PDF is free
>to implement. They (Apple) did not invent generic
>PDF, Adobe did.
Adobe created the PDF format, but there's no ``Generic PDF''. Apple did implement a subset of PDF capabilities initially, but there was no specific term for what they implemented / didn't implement before doing so (unless it was ``tricksy things which take a lot of work). Apple has steadily worked to improve this, and Panther / 1.3's pdf support now includes things like CoolShades which weren't supported before.
Free to implement? Are you saying Mike Paquette and all the other engineers at Apple to create PDF worked for free? (see Mike Paquette's posts to usenet:comp.sys.next.advocacy/hardware on how it felt to spend his first years at Apple after purchasing NeXT ``recreating my previous ten years of work at NeXT on Display PostScript''.
There's no licensing fee in implementing
William
Display PostScript _is_ PostScript (essentially Level 1, w/ most of the Level 2 extensions, plus some screen-oriented stuff).
.pdf---well, yes, they had to budget their engineering effort, but they've been adding to what's supported with each rev---Panther adds support for CoolShades (even defined in Pantone spot colors), and apparently hyperlink support is in the works as well.
As regards Quartz being a subset of
One of the coolest hacks in NeXTstep was to add a ``Print'' button to an app's window using Interface Builder---it'd let you get a PostScript representation of said Window.
Vector UI has come and gone as a concept since the days of PenPoint---hopefully it'll come back again eventually.
William
No, Apple was forced to create Quartz (nee ``Display PDF'') when Adobe pulled out the rug from under them and renegged on their promise to provide (first) a free license for Display PostScript, then a low-cost one---this was what nuked Apple's ``Yellow Box'' strategy to have a free (then inexpensive) run-time for what are now called ``Cocoa'' programs. Adobe has a history of yanking the chains of DPS licensees---look how the license changed for DPS between NeXTstep 1 or 2 and v3---at v3, suddenly it was resolution limited to _less_ than 800dpi (seems a cottage industry had grown up around connecting NeXT boxes to imagesetters to function as RIPs)
.eps files having bitmap or PICT previews.
Giving up Display PostScript cost _years_ of engineering effort (to develop Quartz), as well as effortless display redirection (no nxhosting), and going back to the requirement of
William