From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 95 23:36:09 PST
To: mrm@netcom.com (Marianne Mueller)
Subject: Re: Java & Netscape security (reply to misc. postings)
Message-ID: <199511170734.XAA12538@ix3.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 11:33 AM 11/16/95 -0800, Marianne Mueller wrote:

>I think it would be great if either of these two things were to magically
happen:
>
>	1) people would stop putting postscript docs on web pages
>	because it's the wrong technology for WWW - it wastes
>	bandwidth - it's hard to view & hence often ugly - everyone
>	just prints it out anyway and then complains because there
>	is no one "standard" implementation of postscript printing
>	worldwide and there are dozens of minor problems

Postscript is often a better model for applications like WWW -
certainly more flexible than GIFs, and often smaller, for pictures
that are composed of drawings or text-like objects rather than
scanned photographs.  You don't have to worry about resolution
differences, jaggies, and ugliness - just compatibility and
security and memory consumption :-).  It's somewhat the difference
between X and NeWS.  I seldom print Postscript documents out;
I view them with Ghostscript, though lack of a non-HP printer 
affects this...   Viewing java docs on line, with the equations
written as GIFs (without even an alternate text eqn or fortran form)
is much tougher.

>	2) someone could implement a secure postscript previewer
>	(whatever that means!) 
Yep.  If you've got something that limits itself to making marks
on virtual paper and modifying memory in well-defined areas,
that's probably good enough.  I'm hoping Java can do much the same job.

...
> If you have data you can't
>bear to lose, be sure to practice safe computing.  Perform backups
>regularly, and use judgement about which interpreters and executable
>programs you allow to run on your PC.
#--
#				Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281