Subject: News Application Suggestion

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 87 14:02:03 EST

Sun's recent distribution of a document describing News Applications has
got me thinking.  In case you haven't seen it, the document itself was
distributed as the text of a Postscript program which, when sent to a
Postscript-compatible laser printer, produced a nicely-formatted 27 page
document which included TEXT in a variety of different fonts and sizes and
also a fair amount of embedded GRAPHICS.

Now, I wasn't too impressed with the applications described, but the way
that the document itself was distributed over ordinary mail WAS impressive
(to me at least.)

So, here's a free idea:  How about an enhancement to "MailTool" which
incorporates a small graphics editor.  The editor could be like a simplified
version of MacDraw supporting a small number of primitive graphics objects
such as lines, boxes, circles, and text which could be precisely located
with respect to the graphics.  This editor could be invoked by an additional
button in MailTool.  You would compose your graphics with the mouse.
When you clicked a "done" button, the tool would compose the Postscript
commands which produce the specified graphics and insert them into your
mail message in the correct place.

Your mail recipient would of course need a similar tool at the receiving end
which would scan the incoming message and intercept the Postscript code,
converting it back into viewable graphics.  Hardcopy on a PS laser printer
should be easy.

Since the message itself would be entirely text, such a system shouldn't
break any existing mail systems.  There would be a few gotchas, of course:
one problem might be that mail with a lot of graphics might exceed the
dreaded 64k message size barrier.  Also, I can forsee how nicely this
kind of tool would enhance the typical kinds of abuses we see in groups
like talk.bizarre.  (no flames, please.. only kidding :-))

Well, how about it, somebody?  This would really blow RapidFax out
of the water!!

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Bill Leue, GE Research & Development   |  Usual Disclaimers Apply
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