[Dps-devel] Re: Questions about DPS

[Juliusz C. <jc...@pp...>]

Hi,

JK> I'm very interested in your DPS project for XFree86.

Glad to hear that.

JK> 1) Is this project still alive? 

Most definitely so, although I've had little time to work on it over
the last year.

JK> I've read on your project pages that "rendering performance is not
JK> very good and memory usage is tragic". Is this still truth?

Partly so.  Rendering performance is good for text and geometry.  It
is poor for bitmap images.

Memory usage is bad.  Really bad.

JK> 2) Do you plan to add support for rendering PDF files?

No.  PDF files are random-access data structures, and not suitable for
a stream-based protocol such as DPS/X.

JK>    I'd like to develop the collection of tools for viewing,
JK>    creating and editing PDF files for KDE and I'm looking
JK>    for the best underlying technology to use.

I'm sorry, but I won't try to convince you here.  I think DPS is fine
for this application (if used right), but I'm probably biased.  I
suggest checking the bibliography on the DPS page.

Unless something happens, my DPS extension will not be ready for
production deployment in the near future: there is only so much time I
can devote to Free software, and I don't see this amount of time
increasing in the near future.  This is something you need to take
into account.

JK>    I remember that in the early stage of Mac OS X development
JK>    the core rendering engine was based upon PostScript, then
JK>    they switched to PDF.

No.  They've switched to a subset of DPS, which they are marketing as
PDF.  It has nothing to do with PDF (except that, just like PDF, they
are using the PS imaging model).

JK> It seems that PDF is open and free and PostScript is open but no
JK> so free, isn't it?

Both PDF and PS have Free implementations (Ghostscript, xpdf).  Both
are open in the sense that the spec is published; however, both are
controlled by Adobe.

JK> 3) Does DPS font anti-aliasing? (or anti-aliasing in general)

Yes, in principle.  No, it's not implemented yet.

JK> 4) Is there a way how to display fonts embedded in the PostScript
JK>    File throught DPS on X11 Display?

Yes, this is easy to do.

I hope this helps,

                                        Juliusz