This is Design-Choices in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 19-Dec-1989 17:06:49 From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Subject: Design Choices (was Re: What do I want to see in the Apple of the 90's?) >> As soon as you print on a printer with it's own postscript engine, there .> is hardly any noticable slowdown, there is complete spooling as in any UNIX .> system. > >...and the printer most likely to be used... > >OK, OK, that's not fair. But it does illuminate a point: we're talking about >standard features. Otherwise, I could wail about how easy it is to install >EtherNet support on the Mac. What I consider as an important design choice is the consistent support of postscript. NeXT would be stupid to eat up it's resources to develop another postscript printer. There are enough on the marktet. The important question was, is there a way to provide users with a relatively cheap PERSONAL PRINTER. The cleanest way to do this, without going the way of the image writer, was to make a non-intelligent postscript printer. I do not think, that NeXT really believes, that their printer would be of any use as a network printer, unless you dedicate a whole cube to it. Printers are not standerd, neiter for the NeXT nor for the Mac. In neither case you are bound to the respective manufacturer. The only thing NeXT wanted to make sure is, that there should not emerge a dual standard for printing (postscript for the high end, and something else for the personal range). The only way to do this, was the solution they chose. (Well, they could have built upon the HP-deskjet, but this would have been even slower, and someone who pays in the order of 10k$ for the system, is likely not to look if the printer costs 1500 or 2000$) > I was trying to communicate was that Apple pretty >much puts developers in a straighjacket. And I don't mean that negatively, of >course. I mean it to be the best possible thing they could be doing. Mac would >have failed without the straightjacket. NeXT seems to have the Toolbox without >the conscience. Well, I think this can be answered only over time. In the NeXT technical documentation is carefully documented how the menues should look like, where ne items should be inserted. Then the AppKit removes a lot of decisions from the programer. If however NeXT can keep it's developers disciplined, is another question... Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@cogsci.bitnet
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