[metapost] envelope proposal 4

[Larry Siebenmann]

Hi Jacko and Giuseppe,

The best current interim remedy for our relative ignorance
concerning rasterization is I believe to follow up
Giuseppe's reformatting suggestion with vigour.  Hopefully
it would be possible to collaborate to produce highly
readable electronic versions of the wealth of interesting
articles that John Hobby has posted at

   http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/hobby/pubs.html. 

I believe that John would willingly post such alternative
versions; Giuseppe might already ask concerning his 
DjVu version of the thesis.

Giuseppe's suggestion of DjVu format is good.
Unfortunately I have the impression that DjVu has been
derailed -- in spite of any assertions to the contrary.

Acrobat reader provides better viewing on more platforms so
I would suggest doing a "TIFF G4" based pdf format too.
Send me the bitmaps and I will take on that conversion.  

Still better, but less hopeful, would be to get back 
to the more efficient and better documented formats
like 

      ("dvi" plus "bitmapped" plus "eps")

I imagine that John has preserved 'source' for some of the
articles. There is an astonishing tendency to trust in the
permanence of formats that like pk-based ".ps" 
turn out to be ephemeral.

Cheers,

Laurent S.

PS.  I fear that much of the literature on rasterization
is unavailable for commercial reasons of various sorts.
Knuth's consistently well documented work 
is an island in a sea of fire.

PPS.  Some readers have access to high quality GhostView
implementations; they must wonder why pk-based ".ps" 
is a problem!