RIP: John Warnock

[BobRoosth]

I assume all you have heard about the passing John. This column in the LA Times has some history I did not know, and I have been familiar with Adobe and PostScript for a long time. Two lifetimes ago I even made sales calls at Xerox in El Segundo trying to help sell Texas Instruments microprocessors. Sometime after I worked for another company that had one of the first Xerox laser printers. Not the 9700, but the Dover described down the page a bit. The office worked in was a few blocks from Xerox in El Segundo. I do not know how the bosses got hold of that machine as it was not being sold or marketed.

[terrie]

I didn't know. Thanks so much for posting...


Also, thanks for the links--the LA Times' display is GHASTLY!!! particularly given the subject matter...'-}}


I knew who Warnock was, of course, but I didn't know much of what Hiltzik outlines. To me, it's sad what Adobe has become--don't get me started on the crap known as "creative cloud" or the invasiveness of "adobetm"...ICK!!!



Terrie

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks for the link, Bob. Very interesting stuff.

I think they got things a little out of sequence, saving PostScript for the last few paragraphs. Without Warnok and Geschke, no PostScript. Without PostScript, no PDF, which was very much based on PS.

"This became Postscript, which was first bundled into Apple printers ..."

Well ... the LaserWriter printers, at least. They were truly were revolutionary, made the DTP revolution possible in the same way the Mac did. But there was also the ImageWriter, a slightly steroidal NEC 8023 (I think C.Itoh also sold it under their brand name).

"Acrobat was an offspring of Postscript. To Warnock’s dismay, Acrobat was an unaccountably hard sell."

Not unaccountable at all. It took Adobe years to work out that charging substantial bucks for what's become the free Reader was a total game stopper. If people couldn't open and read the PDFs, nobody in their right minds would pay the utterly crazy sums they were asking for the other bits and pieces of PDFalia.

Remember, at the time all of the features that are now part of Acrobat were individual (and costly) programs. Wanna make PDFs? Buy PDFWriter. Wanna make *good* PDFs? Buy Distiller. Then Acrobat itself if you wanted to edit PDFs, add links and such. And if you wanted to index a whole catalog of PDFs, another chunk. Catalog, I think it was called.

Literally thousands of dollars for all this stuff. Almost makes today's Acrobat look cheap by comparison! ;-)

I fell in love with the whole idea of Acrobat when it first came out and at the time was lucky to be part of Adobe's service bureau program, which qualified me for deep discounts on a lot of their stuff. And as I recall, John Cornicello (YO JOHN! SHOUTING OUT TOO YA!) managed to get me the whole Acrobat suite. Fun times.

[terrie]

steve: Remember, at the time all of the features that are now part of Acrobat were individual (and costly) programs. Wanna make PDFs? Buy PDFWriter. Wanna make *good* PDFs? Buy Distiller. Then Acrobat itself if you wanted to edit PDFs, add links and such. And if you wanted to index a whole catalog of PDFs, another chunk. Catalog, I think it was called.

I didn't know that!


Most interesting...I started with Photoshop and then moved into dtp'ing stuff so I was a bit late to the party and Acrobat had been released...




Terrie

[Steve Rindsberg]

They might have been able to sell all that other stuff at fancy prices, but until they released a free, easily accessible Reader, the whole thing hit a brick wall.

Phillips did something similar when they released the audio cassette. Other companies tried similar products but demanded high licensing fees from would-be manufacturers. Phillips jumped in with their offering and a licensing fee of something like a penny a unit, and to prevent a proliferation of incompatible recording formats, they specified the exact format very tightly. Instant compatibility.

They did allow exceptions like the audio cassette recorders made for the AV/slideshow industry, for example ... stereo tracks *and* a control track on a one-sided recording, rather than stereo tracks, flip it, two more stereo tracks as on standard cassettes. The only exceptional thing about these suckers was the odd format, which had its uses, and the price, which was outrageous. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars more than a standard deck.

The patent or at least their restriction agreements ran out some while back, so now you can find all sorts of interesting variations; four or even (maybe?) 8-track synch recording decks. So you can ... errr .... play with yourself.

OTOH, now that digital's taken over, I don't imagine anyone makes or sells these things any longer.

[terrie]

steve: but until they released a free, easily accessible Reader, the whole thing hit a brick wall.

I have always thought that Adobe's PDF Reader was free but, I guess not and if not, the point is exactly what you've stated. I use/create PDFs alllllllll the time and would be very hard pressed without them...




>>errr .... play with yourself.

ROFL!!! '-}}



Totally off topic...

I am so! annoyed.

I have an old custom built desktop system that I was doing some playing/testing on when the monitor went wonky (an old Nec 2090UXi). I thought it was the monitor itself but it turned out to be the video card--PNY Nvidia Quadro 600--which, when installed brought everthing back.

I have booted it up a few times since I replaced the video card but not moved forward with the testing I'd been doing until today. The system had been plugged in to a heavy duty extension cord (pc case and monitor) because the battery in my UPS (CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD) coincidentially died (it was pretty old). I'd gotten a new UPS battery and finally got around to plugging the system bits into the UPS. Powered up the system and it booted just fine. Shut it down and then a bit later decided to do some work in the system and...the monitor went wonky...again...which is just frustrating...

I've order a "new" video card via ebay--$9.49--because it's the simplest and least expensive approach. Keep your fingers crossed that the "new" card not only works but, lasts longer than a couple of weeks (the earlier "new" card was $11.99 and I may contact the sellers if this 2nd "new" card works)...



Terrie

[Steve Rindsberg]

I feel your frustration. My tale of joy?

I'm kinda the handydandy photographer/videographer/AV/sound man for a couple of non-profits I work with. One of them is the local Japan America society, which was having a "Cold sake/Hot jazz" event at a gorgeous old mansion built, probably, before the civil war. It must have been retro-fitted for electric and all the contemporaneous mod-cons back in the twenties or thirties, I'd guess.

I wanted to string several powered speakers around the room so that none of them would have to be cranked way up, yet everybody'd be able to hear well. Well, all of my power extension cables are three prong, because y'know, safety? But all of the outlets in the place were two-prong and not an adapter to be found.

I ended up having to rip the third prong out of one of my short 3-way extension cables, then run extension cords ALL around the room back to that one 3-way. That PLUS the audio cables going back and forth and every which way. Thank heavens I brought every cable of both types I owned.

Oh and all this setup stress happened in ... did I mention mod-cons? or that said mod-cons didn't include AC? ... 95 degree + 150% humidity. I EARNED that first beer!

[terrie]

steve: But all of the outlets in the place were two-prong and not an adapter to be found.

How annoying!!! I ran into that the other day although not anywhere even close to what you were doing.



>> I EARNED that first beer!

You earned at least a DOZEN!! beers...'-}}



I went looking for a VGA cable to test the Nec monitor on one of the laptops I have just to see if it's the monitor even though I think the monitor, while old, is working properly. That led to a good hour of going through the cable drawer--took that long even though I'd bagged and labelled a lot of the cabling. I have rebagged and relabelled everything and have only 1 cable that I have nodamnedidea what it goes to...'-}}


Two interesting (welll...if you are nerdy and...I am) finds are the parallel port cables (and parallel port cable extensions) of which I have absolutely no need but I just can't throw them out because, maybe, someday, somewhere, in some parallel universe, they might be useful?


Along with the parallel port cables, I found FIVE! serial port mouse (mice?) one of which has a really rather cool looking lizard/dragon skin design. It's cool enough that I'm going to see if there might be some sort of serial-to-usb converter--there is a serial-to-P/S2 converter because one mouse has one so maybe I could do serial-to-P/S2-to-P/S2-to-USB??? '-}}





Terrie

[Steve Rindsberg]

Parallel cables ... yep, right there with you. And no, I don't know why either, other than, y'know, beCAUSE.

But the mice? The back of the computer's going to look like one of mine back in the evil "all your software is dongelized" days. You'll have to move it half a foot out from the wall! Are you sure the PC doesn't have a serial port?

[woody649]

Parallel cables? I have a lot of them. I, too, can't bring myself to thrown them away. I also have several VGA cables and some other miscellany that I have no idea about.