Compressed Postscript bitmat format.

[Stephen Robbins <Stever@YUKON.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM>]

    Date: Wed, 5 Apr 89 15:25 PDT
    From: DE@PHOENIX.SCH.Symbolics.COM (Doug Evans)

        Date: Wed, 5 Apr 89 09:54:29 PDT
        From: felix@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Francois Felix INGRAND)


        I am writing a report and I am including some hardcopies of the Lisp
        Machine screen (Postscript format) in it. To avoid any cutting/pasting,
        I include the "postscript file" in my document (using the \special
        command with LaTeX/dvips).

        Unfortunately, each screen dump is approximately 220 K...
        Considering that I will have 60 screen dumps... It makes 12 Mega of
        pictures for this report... (that I have to keep under postscript
        format for inclusion)

        I had a quick look to the format used in this screen dump, and it
        looks like it is not compressed at all. When I run it thru "compress"
        I get a 91.08% compression rate (after all, these screens are almost white).

        I was just wondering if anybody have already written, in lisp for the
        Lisp Machine side, and in postscript for the printer side, a small
        "compressor".

        Thanks in advance,

        Felix

    If anyone has such a compression scheme for PostScript that can be run
    in a Lispm and decoded by a LaserWriter, I personally (and probably
    Symbolics in general) would **REALLY** be interested in seeing it.  I
    have several of my own bitmap programs that would benefit from such a
    program.

>From my days at Bachman Information Systems, I seem to recall Palladian
Software had such a hack.  Are there any ex-Palladians on the list who
can confirm/deny this?

- Stephen