Miscellaneous > Programming & Networking
vector graphics help
piratePenguin:
http://ajaxsketch.com/ Wow!
worker201:
For all those who are interested, here's what the Red Book (PostScript Language Reference, 3rd edition, Adobe Systems Press) has to say about the copyrights surrounding PostScript:
--- Quote ---The general idea of using a page description language is in the public domain. Anyone is free to devise his or her own set of unique commands that constitute a page description language. However, Adobe Systems Incorporated owns the copyright for the list of operators and the written specification for Adobe's PostScript language. Thus, these elements of the PostScript language may not be copied without Adobe's permission. Additionally, Adobe owns the trademark "PostScript", which is used to identify both the PostScript language and Adobe's PostScript software.
Adobe will enforce its copyright and trademark rights. Adobe's intentions are to:
* Maintain the integrity of the PostScript language standard. This enables the public to distinguish between the PostScript language and other page description languages.
* Maintain the integrity of "PostScript" as a trademark. This enables the public to distinguish between Adobe's PostScript interpreter and other interpreters that can execute PostScript language programs.
However, Adobe desires to promote the use of the PostScript language for information interchange among diverse products and applications. Accordingly, Adobe gives permission to anyone to:
* Write programs in the PostScript language.
* Write drivers to generate output consisting of PostScript language commands.
* Write software to interpret programs written in the PostScript language.
* Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of commands to the extent necessary to use the PostScript language for the above purposes.
The only conditions of such permission is that anyone who uses the copyrighted list of commands in this way must include an appropriate copyright notice. This limited right to use the copyrighted list of commands does not include the right to copy this book [oops], other copyrighted publications from Adobe, or the software in Adobe's PostScript interpreter, in whole or in part.
The trademark PostScript(R) (or a derivative trademark, such as PostScript(R) 3(TM)) may not be used to identify any product not originating from or licensed by Adobe. However, it is acceptable for a non-Adobe product to be described as being PostScript-compatible and supporting a specific LanguageLevel, assuming that the claim is true.
--- End quote ---
Weird that Adobe would authorize using prose to say this, as opposed to dense legalese. However, the 3rd edition of the Red Book, and especially this passage, has probably been pored over by teams of lawyers. I think it is safe to assume that this is the "license", or at least a usable version of it.
So it looks to me like it should be legal to write a PostScript interpreter (or use GhostScript) and insert it into a software package, and there should be no trouble opening or manipulating or saving a PostScript file. However, my understanding is that the Linux community as a whole is against this kind of licensing, no matter how liberal it is. The source of PostScript is open, but it is not "open source". Correct me if I'm wrong, but a minor little copyright restriction was the reason Linux uses X.org instead of XFree86 now. Anyway, it looks like a case of the FOSS community getting sorta screwed by their own narrow-mindedness. Such strong convictions can be useful, but you have to know when to let them down and when to bend the rules, even the rules you have imposed upon yourself.
Comments on my take of the license, and the license itself, welcome.
piratePenguin:
--- Quote from: worker201 ---Correct me if I'm wrong, but a minor little copyright restriction was the reason Linux uses X.org instead of XFree86 now.
--- End quote ---
XFree 86 still exists. Most distros chose to use Xorg over it, however, because 1. Xorg is better in many ways (autotools ftmfw) and 2. the licensing conditions of Xorg make it easier to redistribute. With XFree 86 you gotta include the authors names prominently. I don't really understand it, but it's easier to distribute Xorg.
Scribus can import PS and EPS and can export PDF and EPS.
WTF is PS useful for anyhow?
piratePenguin:
Oh and if you did ever look into the Inkscape code you would probably notice this, looks like a PS to SVG converter. Hasn't had any changes in 14 months, maybe the author changed his mind on the licensing stuff? (not likely)
mobrien_12:
--- Quote from: worker201 ---Correct me if I'm wrong, but a minor little copyright restriction was the reason Linux uses X.org instead of XFree86 now.
--- End quote ---
The reason X.org is used is because the XF86 core team went completely insane. They pissed off all their developers, and stifled innovation, which lead to the fork in the first place.
The final straw was when they decided to change the licencing to the old BSD licencing format with the advertising clause. This licence is incompatible with the GPL.
Thus, if anyone shipped binary versions of GPL programs or libraries (such as QT for KDE) linked against the new version of XFree86, they would violate the
GPL. This pretty much leaves most distros (even BSD ones) DEAD in the water if they chose to use the latest version XFree86, although you could download and compile XFree86 yourself if you so desired.
Like I said... insane.
We had a big thread on this a couple years back.
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