Re: Jade Backends (from The DSSSList Digest V2 #120)

[apharris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Adam P. Harris)]

"Jean-Baptiste Nivoit" <jbnivoit@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >However, despite that, if I could only get one and got to pick which
> >one, I would choose PDF, largely because it is better supported BY THE
> >PARTICULAR GROUP of people I'm typically producing for (I decline to
> >venture an opinion on the more general question).

> I personnally would rather for PS first, since PDF is so easy to get
> after (either with GhostScript or the Adobe Distiller), whereas i
> can't think of anything that translates PDF into PS. 

Actually Alladin GhostScript comes with 'pdf2ps' (as of at least
version 5.10).

But I agree probably a generic PS backend would be more robust,
design-wise, than PDF, which may well prove to be just an odd fork in
the Adobe PS roadmap.

> > BTW, a decent plain ASCII (i.e. emailable in an SMTP message as
> >formatted but not marked up plain text) would be even more useful.
> >There are obvious issues with such functionality (what does one do with
> >non-ASCII characters, for example).  My current approach to this one is
> >to use the RTF backend and then save the resulting file as text, which
> >sort of works but is less than totally satisfactory.
> 
> You do want some formatting, though, right?

Not with ascii!

I believe the sgml-tools group <URL:http://www.sgmltools.org/> is
actively working on an NROFF backend, which could pretty easily be
used to generate ASCII as well.  With or without ASCII "formatting",
I'm sure.

.....A. P. Harris...apharris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>


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