World: r3wp

just a quick question .. was it hard/easy to do images in pdf-maker 
?

I'm guessing the same operations are used to include images in postscript.

you just include the raw rgb data

and, in pdf 1.4, optional alpha channel data

so, there's no translation involved ?

inverting the image?

in ps you have to encode the data i guess

you need to invert the alpha channel because it's the opposite in 
rebol

but you can do that as a filter in pdf

since 0x0 is bottom left in ps, and top left in Rebol ...

but for images samples, the first sample is the top left corner

so i don't have to reorder the pixels in pdf maker if that's what 
you are asking

Is there anything that can be done for R3/draw  that helps support 
pdf/postscript creation?

A lack of a printing solution after all these years is still a thing 
in my book.

the problem is that printing is a broad term

it may mean printing a document (i.e. typesetting), or just printing 
what you have on screen

the fact that every os has its own way to handle printing doesn't 
help

on unix you usually create ps and send it to the print spooler

on windows you need to use gdi

on osx i guess you need to create a pdf

Doesn't OSX have a postscript interpreter in it ?

OSX uses LPR, I think

Or did that change?

henrik, does it take ps too?

I think we don't have many choices - you can to-image your layout, 
or go for external engines, using some make-docs - pdf, postscript, 
html plus css standard ...

postscript works on a different level. it's OS wide in OSX. I think 
it converts everything to PDF before printing, because all graphics 
are PDF centric.

if windows handled ps i guess we'd have a good solution. it would 
have been easier for me to write a ps maker instead of a pdf maker 
:)

gabriele, I would think it does. I have to convert docs to PS if 
I want them printed under Linux with LPR

lpr, per se, does not mandate a document format

it just spools documents to the printer

originally documents were text files

and, if you had a ps printer, ps files

how "good" is already w3c's stuff here? I mean html plus css and 
it's media (printing) capabilities? browsers are everywhere ....

then I don't know what it does, but I can pipe PS files directly 
into LPR

then, ghostscript got put in between lpr and the printer, so that 
you could always use ps even for non-ps printers

PS files are just text files

Pekr is very opposed to using ghostscript!

petr, i don't think it has ever been important for html to be a printing 
ml

I think early Netscape clients emitted PS as well.

well, if this is accurate, I don't use ghostscript at all. this 150$ 
printer here must be able to handle postscript natively then :-)

i mean, you can print an html document; but if you wanted to print 
a book, you wouldn't probably use html

some printers come with postscript emulation.

Gabriele, that's what annoys me about Rebol documentation.

It's all html and you can't print it.

Gabriele - I know, but they try to ... Graham - yes, I try to use 
what is at user's disposal already .... browser or mostly Acrobat 
Reader ....

In the early days, rebol docs came as pdfs.

that's one of the reason a pdf emitter for md3 is very important

I think HTML/CSS is not good enough for printing, even with the printing 
oriented CSS commands. It's a nightmare to match margins, and browsers 
don't interpret the settings equally.

and why i studied TeX

I was most upset seeing images cut in half by my colour printer when 
printing out the view docs.