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postscript

  • To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
  • Subject: postscript
  • From: tuk at natazhat.uafphys.alaska.edu (John Pender)
  • Date: Tue, 23 Mar 93 12:09:20 YST

hiya folks-
i have a proposal that some of you might consider and comment on.  mathsource
is a very nice source of all kinds of applications of mathematica, but the
format isn't all that convenient for normal unix users.  i'm referring in
particular to those of us who would like to be able to view a particularly
nice plot or, especially, a series of plots linked together as an animation 
which someone has donated to the archives.  the "unix" format supplied in 
mathsource is a file called file.tar.Z, which certainly can be read over using
anonymous ftp.  unfortunately, more often than not this "unix" file is actually
in notebook format.  one can use the appropriate version of nb2tex to produce a
tex document, but that doesn't allow one to load in images and view an
animation.

there is a couple of ways a unix user can view someone else's pictures (besides
generating them all over again).  both require that the image be stored in
mathematica's own special version of postscript.  a file in this format can be
read into a mathematica session or it can be displayed on the screen using one
of the utilities mathematica supplies (x11ps, motifps, sunps, etc).  the 
problem is that all images imbedded in a notebook are in encapsulated 
postscript format, which can't be read either by mathematica or by any of the
utilities.

would it really be that big a deal to store an image or a series of images
in the archive in the mathematica-compatible postscript format in a compressed
tar file?  am i the only one who wishes he could take a look at the movies?

john pender





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