Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 21:40:12 -0500 From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> To: Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: scr2eps Message-ID: <20010806214012.A289@whizkidtech.net> In-Reply-To: <20010806185300.F21863@windriver.com>; from murray@FreeBSD.org on Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 06:53:00PM -0700 References: <20010806185300.F21863@windriver.com>
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On Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 06:53:00PM -0700, Murray Stokely wrote: > Is "scr2eps" unimplemented, or am I just blind? If it hasn't been >written yet then I can spend some cycles on this but if there are any >ambitious PostScript gurus out there (Adam Stanislav, I'm looking at >you) it would probably become a reality a lot quicker. Well, thanks for calling me a guru. :) Chances are a PostScript guru will be quite reluctant to implement scr2eps. What those of us who love PostScript find most attractive about the language is that it lets us produce *vector* graphics. These can be scaled as large or as small as we want, and always look good. "scr", on the other hand, is about bitmap graphics. While you can always convert vector graphics into bitmap graphics, it is not that simple the other way. You really have two options here. The first option is fairly easy to accomplish: It is possible to use the PostScript language to define a bitmap. Alas, that way the bitmap remains a bitmap and cannot be rescaled (which is the whole point of PostScript). The second option requires a serious mathematical analysis which allows you to find the underlying vector representation of the shape inside the bitmap. This typically requires human intervention: You have to look at the result of such a conversion and decide what parameters to use in the conversion process. Not only is such software non-trivial to write, it is non-trivial to use. If a "scr" file is a screen dump, it is usually quite easy for a human to see the pattern (e.g., here is some text, here some straight line) and write a PostScript program that contains the same text, and whatever lines and such need to be there. It is very hard to do the same in software. Adam -- Press any key to continue, any other key to quit To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the messagehelp
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