From: geoff@fulcrum.oz.au (Geoff Halprin)
Subject: Re: Future of NeWS, I need to know.
Keywords: NeWS
Organization: The Fulcrum Consulting Group
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 02:06:56 GMT

Just to add some more information to this little thread, I recently (yesterday)
posted a query to comp.lang.postscript, with an immediate response from Adobe
(thanks Scott). My $0.02 (and the AUS$ isn't worth much these days) is that
Sun are looking to replace their PostScript-like interpreter with a REAL
PostScript interpreter, so any PS software is compatable, and portable to Sun
with minimal effort. As you'll see from the message below, NeWS has a whole lot
of windowing extensions to PS, so I don't think the NeWS is disappearing, just
being standardised to conform to PS 2.0.

Obviously, this agreement will affect both NeWS and SunPICS products, such as
NeWSprint (IMHO).

Regards,

Geoff
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>Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 09:47:08 -0700
>From: Scott Byer <byer@mv.us.adobe.com>
>Message-Id: <9209281647.AA01094@birch.mv.us.adobe.com>
>Received: by NeXT Mailer (1.82)
>To: geoff@fulcrum.oz.au (Geoff Halprin)
>Subject: Re: PS vs. DPS vs. NeWS
>Reply-To: byer@adobe.com (Scott Byer)
>Status: OR
>
>In comp.lang.postscript article <1992Sep28.074513.19285@fulcrum.oz.au> you  
>wrote:
>
>> Hi there,
>
>> Can anyone point me to an article/book/email/?? which gives a detailed
>> comparison of PostScript, Display PostScript, and Sun's NeWS??
>
>I don't have much time here today, so I'll have to be brief :-).
>
>Display PostScript Level 2 (which is what will be in Solaris v2.0) is
>basically Level 2 PostScript with a couple of extra operators specific
>to the display.  Those differences are all documented in the Red&White
>book (PostScript Language Reference Manual, Second Ed.  Addison Wesley),
>save one.  The only difference not documented will be the image
>dictionary type 2, which allows for what is essentially a 'blit'
>(though much nicer because it deals with screen depther and transformations
>and clipping when it has to).
>
>Display PostScript is *not* a windowing system.  It is a imaging model
>server, which is inteded to live within a window server such as X (as
>an extension).  It has a binary protocol for talking to it quickly.
>It does no event handling in and of itself, unless the OEM placing it
>within the windowing system decides to extend it to do so (as NeXT
>has).
>
>NeWS, however, was a windowing system built on top of a
>PostScript-compatible interpreter.  All windowing operations were done
>by sending an extended version of the PostScript language to the
>server, and all events were handled through the interpreter.  NeWS is
>missing such concepts as 'GlobalVM' (as documented in the R&W book)
>and other Level 2 / DPS features.
>
>Enough features were missing so that porting certain DPS-based
>applications (such as X-based Illustrator and PhotoShop) could not
>economically be ported to NeWS.  With the inclusion of Display PostScript
>in Solaris, those applications will be ported to the Sun platform.
>
>--
>Scott Byer                             NeXTMail: byer@mv.us.adobe.com
>Adobe Systems Incorporated               These are *my* opinions, and  
>
>1585 Charleston Road, P.O. Box 7900        do not necessarily reflect
>Mountain View, CA 94039-7900             the opinions of my employer.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
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