X-Message-Number: 2913 From: Keith Lofstrom <> Subject: CRYONICS: Postscript ... Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 11:17:34 -0700 (PDT) Transporting images: These can be sent as either pixels or line segments. Pixels are general but expensive. The best way to move pixels is probably the JPEG standard, though GIF is currently the most popular. Line segments are restricted but more compact. The most widespread ways to move line segments are HPGL or PCL or Postscript. Postscript is the most "vendor independent" solution, and has the advantage of being a complete language, which means that in theory it can interpret anything else. Thus, Postscript is also capable of moving pixels somewhat inefficiently; I imagine someone has written a JPEG decoder for it. That being said, Postscript comes in Level 1 and Level 2 flavors; level 2 is an extension of 1 and not necessarily backwards compatable. If we use Postscript, we should stick to level 1, so all you folks can use the Postscript laser printers you found at garage sales. There is a public domain package called "Ghostscript" that runs under Unix and MSDOS that will display Postscript on a PC and print it out on non-Postscript printers - achingly slowly, but what else are you planning on doing with the printer? Even Postscript is prolix, so however these images are generated, I propose we just archive them somewhere accessable, and don't send them out as part of any mailings. In an archive, the images can be stored in a number of different formats anyway, thus rendering this little controversy moot. Now, back to the topic of preserving our brains, surely the most valuable way of transporting images into the future :-) Keith Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2913