CompuServe Messages

Craig: PostScript is not necessarily inefficent, you just get big code with it. Since everything in PostScript is ASCII, you can only describe bitmap pictures in ASCII which will blow it out from it's "1 bit/1pixel" format to at least "1 byte/1pixel". This will naturally make your files bigger. However, if you print a PostScript file directly to your PS printer, it isn't necessarily slowed down by the ASCII format. It's just transporting it across modems and putting it on floppies that gets to be a pain. And ASCII compresses really well (most of the time) so even that's not really too much of a problem. The fact that PostScript is in human-readble ASCII format is what's made it such a world standard. You can write and debug a PostScript program with a word processor. It makes it universally accessible (and trust me, debugging PostScript is bad enough already…:) Gary – Mirror Image Prod. (416) 495-7469, via WHAP!