On Nov 22, 2012, at 10:12 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: > @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).
Support in POI is oldstyle reverse engineering and has only been developed by CMS types who want to index the text. It is mostly driven from the Apache Tika project which is consumed by both Apache Jackrabbit a JCR reference implementation used by Adobe product and Apache Solr. > > - 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>. True. The key is the engineer - John Warnock. > > I didn't realize that the first Postscript license was with Apple until I > reviewed the Adobe 25th anniversary timeline. Adobe built itself a $1000 Postscript licenses on the $3500 Apple Laserwriters and DTP explosion. > > 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.) We evaluated XPS - the big problem was that even though Xerox invented Ethernet with external systems was via a serial port. > > > 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. Totally familiar with Metacode in the earlier 9700 series printers. > > 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. For metacode, our driver was optimized for byte count and sorted by scanline. Lines were drawn with tiled line segment font characters. Did you ever encounter PLOT97 and Henry Kramer? We had a full source code license and made significant modifications. I happened to see some Engineering notes for Metacode and John Warnock's name was on some. He is all over this area. We are talking work from 33 years ago. This worked very well and the output drivers were rewritten and converted to Postscript in the early 90s and are in use today. They are due for another re-work as Fortran skill is hard to find. But back to the point you are correct PDF is more page oriented and removes many of the general programming aspects in Postscript. It is still a great dynamic language that happens to control output and print. But I've I always used the most primitive forms possible for the main content as that always maximizes engine speed. The trick is in the re-layout of the decomposed printing elements which are organized for display convenience and not editing. Regards, Dave > > -----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. >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >
