@Dave, If POI has support for Publisher format, where is the specification for that format to be found? I nosed around the Microsoft Open Specification collection and must have missed it. (RTF is also not there, but available in a different location).
- Dennis For the record, I don't think that Postscript is a descendant of Xerox Interpress. Although Adobe (founded in December 1982) was a spin-out of Xerox PARC, some of it may well have been over disagreements on ways to handle final-form (printing) data streams. It is probably better to think of them as peers, forked from parallel, now vanished, interbred ancestries. This may be fairly accurate: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postscript_programming_language#History>. I didn't realize that the first Postscript license was with Apple until I reviewed the Adobe 25th anniversary timeline. I do know that the rivalry between Xerox and Adobe was pretty intense on the Xerox product engineering side at the end of the 80s. (They had fumbled this, the low-end laser printer, and commodity personal computing as well.) I was on a project where Adobe was contracted to make a Postscript engine that emitted Interpress. This was all on an EISA board added to a Novell Netware server running as a front-end to Docutech. Docutech was an XNS and Interpress consumer built on a custom ("Mesa") processor chips. In retrospect, it is amazing how many bad bets and tea-leave readings occurred. Part of it had to do with extremely long product development cycles and an inability to respond to agile newcomers riding commodity cost curves to glory. PS: Interpress was always page oriented and that was important for high-performance printing where multiple pages were in different stages of being imaged in order to keep the paper-path running at volume, deal with high-volume color, etc. So there needed to be ordering constraints so that everything necessary to image each successive page was available as early in the stream as possible. At an architectural level, PDF is closer to that, in contrast with the greater arbitrariness of Postscript. I've not checked to see which Microsoft XPS (another attempt to use the "Metro" term) is closest to for final-form printing. -----Original Message----- From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2w...@comcast.net] Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 09:09 To: dev@openoffice.apache.org Cc: Phillip Zadro Subject: Re: desktop publishing Hi Phil, It is not completely impossible that an extension could be added to AOO to read and write Publisher files. It just takes one or two Java programmers with the time and interest. See [1] for where the effort could start. [ ... ] SVG is also a descendent of Postscript. (as Postscript is a descendent of Xerox Interpress plus III) [ ... ] To close the loop if you want to process Publisher files and help with understanding the files format Apache POI is a good place. [1] Regards, Dave [1] http://poi.apache.org/hpbf/index.html > > Maybe you comes to Fosdem in Brussels, we would be happy to invite you to > show on the work floor how is works here > > Greetz > > Fernand >> Hi Fernand, >> >> I would love to read a more detailed public success story about your >> experience and work with writer. It sounds very interesting especially when >> you stay in one world, means no heavy exchange of MS formats. >> >> Thanks for sharing >> >> Juergen >> >> Am Donnerstag, 15. November 2012 um 09:34 schrieb Fernand Vanrie: >>> Alexandro , >>> >>>> On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 11:24 PM, Phillip Zadro >>>> <ricaza1...@hotmail.com.au>wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> hi Is there any likelihood that OpenOffice will one day include a desktop >>>>> publisher? There is only one thing that is stopping me from migrating >>>>> completely from Microsoft Office to either OpenOffice or LibreOffice and >>>>> it >>>>> is their lack of a Desktop Publisher comparable with MS Publisher. I have >>>>> used Publisher for over 15 years and love its practicality, particularly >>>>> with paginating of booklets. Even a separate program like Serif PagePlus >>>>> cannot save in MS format either, so I am obliged to stay with MS Office. >>>>> Pity.. Thanks Phil >>>>> >>>> >>>> Draw is a perfect Desktop publisher, is so perfect is compatible with other >>> We uses exclusifly Writer (+ lot of basic macro's) to make over 8.000 >>> full color magazine pages par year. This pages are all i2 languages >>> versions, with cutouts (we uses Edit Contour) transparancies etc...) >>> Our Editors places lowres images "embedded" in there documents, a final >>> macro checks the resolution quality and changes the lowres with the >>> highres (stored on a server) just before exporting to PDF >>> Sinds there is SVG, we no longer use EPS and "Adobe" to make our PDF's. >>> PostScript is dead anyhow (lack of transparency) the LO/OO- PDF export >>> is with use off a Lanczos filter nearly perfect. >>> We only needs a "payed" Color Server to transfer our RGB PDF's to CMYK >>> Our magazines are printed by different print houses (15.000-3.000 exp.) >>> on high quality paper, there are no complaints from our printers and the >>> readers can not sea the difference between our Magazines an thus maded >>> by payed DTP applications >>> Just a pitty thats SVG is still exported as bitmap (sould been repaired >>> in 3.7) and PDF is still not a accepted as a graphic format like we can >>> use (Tiff, jpg, etc...) >>> >>> Greetz >>> >>> Fernand >>>> desktop publishers like Scribus and is based on a frame based paradigm. >>>> There are some features that would be desirable but is pretty easy to >>>> complete basic and medium tasks like Flyers, Booklets and all it has layers >>>> which keeps design separated from content. And have multiple layouts and >>>> use of vectorial forms. >>>> >>>> With improved use of SVG Draw is also gaining strenght in the area of >>>> design compatibility and would be improving as more features are >>>> considered. >>>> >>> >>> >> >> >
