European Raster Image Processor for Common Fonts and Page Description Languages

EURORIP - 5167

Keywords raster image processors, page description languages, font servers, PostScript

Start Date: 01-DEC-90 / Duration: 28 months

Objectives and Approach

The EURORIP project aims to develop a cheap coprocessor that will provide a PC with the ability to implement graphics applications with high performance and fidelity.

The Raster Image Processor (RIP) will consist of a board, which can be plugged into a PC (AT) or a PS/2 or compatible, with between 8 and 16 Mbyte of memory and using a modern CPU. It will provide several common page-description languages (PDLs), such as PostScript, together with outline-fonts as a common interpreter and a common font resource. EURORIP will be used as platform for standard PDLs and fonts in order to facilitate porting them to special raster image processors. It will directly drive a screen and a common laser-printer engine, and will be easily adaptable for special screens, laser or inkjet printer engines or typesetters, as it will handle coarse resolution (screens), low resolution (printers), and high resolution (typesetters) simultaneously. Adapting EURORIP for other hosts (such as mainframe computers) will be possible as well.

EURORIP aims to produce the first RIP to provide several interpreter languages at once, to solve the font selection problem by providing a font server, to enable a grey-scale screen display as true WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), and to give colour enhancements to PDLs. The latter enhancement is needed for many applications in CAD, desktop publishing and office automation, but is not provided by existing solutions.

Particular project objectives are to:

use a high-performance CPU, and so work with a very new and powerful processor
generate grey-scale signals for display on colour screens (true WYSIWYG and proofing without paper)
provide a "Font Bakery" with the best international layout for Roman fonts
provide a "Type Finder" to solve the naming problem for fonts in a pragmatic way
provide a large library of outline fonts to solve the problem of a missing font at an arbitrary location
provide a large number of format conversions
add colour enhancements to PostScript
provide banding and rastered shades using PostScript as a framework.

CONTACT POINT

Mr Max Mehl
FRAUNHOFER ARBEITSGRUPPE
FÜR GRAPHISCHE DATENVERARBEITUNG
Wilhelminenstr. 7
D - 6100 DARMSDADT
tel: + 49/ 6151-100021
fax: + 49/ 6151-100099
telex: 4197367 AGD D

Participants

FRAUNHOFER ARBEITSGRUPPE
FÜR GRAPHISCHE DATENVERARBEITUNG - D - C
AUTOGRAPH INTERNATIONAL A/S - DK - P
URW GMBH - D - P

EURORIP - 5167, December 1993

please address enquiries to the ESPRIT Information Desk

html version of synopsis by Nick Cook