Subject: Desktop Publishing Initiative

From: "L.S.Ng" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 May 1994 14:28:55 BST

New Possibilities for Chinese Desktop Publishing
================================================

Desktop Publishing used to be a high end business. A decent DTP package
will normally cost a fortune. It is even more so with Chinese DTP due to
its requirement of large font libraries. Not so many 'months' ago, one
Chinese font package used to cost thousands if not tens of thousands of
dollars.

But now, there emerged new 'enabling technologies' that can promise to
bring Chinese DTP to a whole new 'low end'.

Firstly, Chinese scaleable fonts in the form of True Type Fonts are now
available in the public domain. Not only that, font generators can also
be obtained freely.  The only cost of a Chinese font now is disk space.
This can be further reduced in the future using decomposition
techniques.

Secondly, there are now public domain Postscript interpretters. Such
software exist to render graphical data in high level language
to low level bitmap data. In other words, you can print Postscript data
in any types of cheap printers, not only expensive Postscript printers.

One of the Postscript software worth mentioning is Ghostscript. It is
not only designed for rendering image on printer, but also video
display. It makes a handy tools for Postscript software designer. Now a
Postscript programmer can do infinite experiments on a cheap PC at no
extra cost other than time. This means DTP software development cost can
be cut down dramatically. In the end, you can expect to see DTP quality
software for Chinese in the public domain.

Although both TTF and PS software are already there, we need tools that
can linked both together. So we can use TTF font for Postscript
printout, effectively gaining the best of both worlds.

It is in the light of this view that leads to my initial project of
ttf2ps. The first and most fundamental problem to be solved was to
derive PS curve data from TTF curve data. Initially the math of this
problem looked daunting. Fortunately it was all over. The relationship
is indeed simple and beautiful. This is no wonder if you think that both
types of data share the same origin - to describe curve.

Three main tools I used in the process were all available in the public
domain. The first was the Postscript Reference Manual in the library :-),
The second was the GNU C compiler, also in public domain. The third was
Ghostscript, also from the public domain.

With Ghostscript, I can test my PS data generated by my ttf2ps program
over and over again without complaint by anybody. I did not waste a
single piece of paper on the printer!!

Tools alone are not enough, more important are invaluable information
such as specification and source code, provided by helpful and dedicated
individual on the Internet. The single most important piece of source
code is the Chinese TTF font loader written by Lin Yawjen of Taiwan. He
is also so far the only author of public domain Chinese TTF. Also there
are numerous contributions by other individuals.

Now I think the 'low level' stuff of the possible new generation of
Chinese DTP is finished with the availability of ttf2ps.  We shall carry
on defining the high level niceties.  Of course, we must do it in the
public domain and make it available to the public domain.

The first thing to do is to define a Chinese page description language
(PDL).  This is required because PS is by nature a graphical language,
not directly suitable for text.  Besides, PS level 1 only support ASCII
which means it is not directly compatible with most Chinese character
codes, though PS level 2 does enable binary encodings but it is not
likely to be as popular as the original.

The Chinese PDL must be openly defined.

When a agreement is reached for PDL, the work can begin for PDL to PS
interpretter.

It may seem difficult to do things in so many levels, i.e.  Chinese
plain text to PDL, PDL to PS, PS to device.  However, this is the only
way achievable at very low cost because each component is small enough
to be implemented inexpensively.  Conventional DTP software tends to be
expensive due to the cost of integration - you have one whole package
which handle keyboard right down to printer.

The PDL shall define many things such as margins, character size,
orientaion, columns per page, character per lines, character attributes
etc. These are at a level higher than PS which is mostly concerned with
graphical objects.

The PDL interpretter should be used to translate a Chinese plain text or
PDL file to PS file.

Our job shall finish at this point. The Postscript to device adaptation
is already available.

Chinese invented printing. Printing is taken as a proud endeavour in our
culture. Now we shall seize the moment to make Printing for the People
possible.

So now we shall bring our attention to the task with the highest
priority: designing a Chinese page description language.

First, we need participants and moderators. We need people who know well
about running discussions on the net.

We shall identify what should be in the PDL. Then decide keywords for
each operation in the PDL and the format of the PDL file.

Next, we need people who will take the challenge of writing PDL to PS
interpretter.  Of course such a work can be broken down to several
components.  Alternatively, many implementations can be run all at once
and the best will survive.

When PDL to PS interpretter is done, our job of the century is done.