Re: Documents on the website/Postscript

[hjohnson@pluto.njcc.com (Herbert R Johnson)]

On Tue, 13 Jan 1998 18:16:16 -0800, Chris Albertson <chris@topdog.pas1.logicon.com> wrote:
*>K Strauss wrote:
*>> 
*>> How about putting PDF versions of documents such as this on the web site?
*>> That way those without PostScript printers could view/print. PDF files are
*>> somewhat larger than ASCII (this file is 317K or 200K when zipped) but
*>> retain all equations, illustrations, etc.
*>>
*>
*>See: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/get510.html
*>
*>They have Ghostscript for VAX, UNIX, OS/2, MS-DOS, MS-Windows & 
*>Macintosh.  With this you will have ability to view and print
*>Postscript.

*>--Chris Albertson

Some time ago I downloaded and installed the MS-Windows (3.1) version of
this product and I've been very happy with it. I also have Version 3.0
of the Adobe PDF viewer for Win 3.1 with Netscape plugin, and it works
well too. However, while you need a proprietary and commercial program to create
PDF files, PostScript output is available from many programs. Postscript
has a long history of association with print publications, while
PDF is a recent Web base standard. Given the genesis of the document
in question, Postscript and maybe flat text are reasonable formats.

And it is no small task to perform document conversions arbitrarily:
it would be more reasonable for those who read the documents to graciously
offer to do the conversions as their abilities and interests suggest.

Herb Johnson

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Herbert R. Johnson                      voice/FAX 609-771-1503 day/nite
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