Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 273 Launch of Desktop Publishing System
The West Coast Computer Festival has always been a paradise for amateur personal computer enthusiasts, but IBM, which advertises as a professional and high-end company, appears here with dignity, which is the best proof.

When he returned to Prince Sabah, Tang Huan found that the other party had bought an Osborne generation machine with great interest and used it as a toy.

"Don, why don't you develop this kind of computer that can be moved around at will?" Prince Sabah asked in confusion, "In my impression, any dynamics and business opportunities in this market will not slip away before your eyes. "

"This kind of portability is very limited. It's more like a concept product. Let others test the water first. When I have accumulated technical reserves in place, I can launch products that are more convenient to move at any time." Tang Huan explained patiently.

Prince Sabah was also busy with affairs. After watching the hustle and bustle of the West Coast Computer Festival, he set off to return to New York on the east coast of the United States, leaving behind a fund account with a negotiated amount, and a hot potato that could be dealt with casually—— MGM.

Tang Huan pulled Gates aside who was talking with Adam Osborn, "Since the IBM-PC has been released, let me have the prototype that IBM gave to Microsoft."

"You don't need to be so anxious. Make an order from IBM, and they will ship it soon. Perhaps, IBM-PC has already been put on the shelves in the mall." Gates wanted to be sloppy.

"Don't talk about other things." Tang Huan was a little impatient, "Don't worry, I'm not interested in the IBM-PC operating system, I just do software transplantation earlier."

"Okay, I'll give you one." Gates couldn't bear the pressure, so he could only agree, but he said unwillingly: "IBM-PC is the biggest competitor of the second-generation Fangyuan computer, why do you provide software for it?" support?"

There are many tricks here, but I can't tell you, lest I be stolen so quickly, Tang Huan slapped me, but didn't explain the reason directly.

……

Zheru's annual developer conference was held at the San Francisco Municipal Auditorium at the San Francisco station of Deng Lijun's second round of North American tour last year. It lasted for two days, and the number of participants reached thousands.

Naturally, Tang Huan was the protagonist, and he started the keynote speech, but it was not he who appeared first, but 13-year-old Celine Dion, who sang a French song "The Voice of God".

Little Loli released her first album "La voix du bon Dieu" this year. This song is the main song in the album and has become the local champion song. According to the market reaction, the record sales should reach 4 open.

It is no exaggeration to say that Celine Dion has become a star in Quebec, and the potential of the future French pop queen can be seen.

Taking advantage of the little Lolita's singing skills this time, Tang Huan asked her to cooperate with the activities, so as to exercise her ability to cope with big scenes. There are thousands of people sitting in the audience, so this is a rare opportunity.

The human voice inevitably changes as we age.

Deng Lijun's voice in the song and dance movie "Miss Fan" she starred in when she was 17 years old is different from what she is now.

The same 17-year-old Zhang Delan's performance in singing the theme song "Flowers Full Moon Tower" of the TVB TV series "Lu Xiaofeng: The Mystery of Jinpeng" is also slightly different from the present.

The voice of this age group is as natural as a jade plate, and the current Celine Dion is in such a state.

After Little Lolita finished singing, Tang Huan walked onto the stage amidst the applause, and said with a smile, "So many people applauded, you have to send an autograph to express your gratitude."

"As much as you want." Celine smiled mischievously, and walked to the table, on which were placed the highest-end model of the second-generation Fangyuan computer, and a laser printer independently developed by Zheru. The word processing software WoraEasy.

At present, Zheru's large-scale software has been graphically implemented on its second-generation Fangyuan computer platform, which is very easy for users to use.

Soon, the laser printer printed a stack of copies according to Celine's request.

"This is my signature. How much do you want?" Celine pointed proudly.

"Please give it to everyone in the audience to see if they are satisfied." Tang Huan waved his hand with a smile.

Celine agreed crisply, distributed the printed copies to everyone, and then left the stage
Seeing this scene, the participants were puzzled at first, but after seeing the printed text with calligraphy features, they were surprised and quickly understood that this is a new technology that will be introduced today.

Tang Huan was in a very happy mood, because after such a long period of technical preparation, a new application field, Desktop Publishing——Desktop Publishing, or DTP, can finally be launched.

It can be said that with this technical means and the informationalization of Chinese characters through Chinese cards, Chinese culture can be compared with the convenience of English in terms of publishing and printing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the first new technology I'm going to introduce is about computer fonts and glyphs, called OpenType." Tang Huan picked up a printed copy left by Celine and showed it, "Everyone has seen, The above writing form is different from what you usually see, with some more personality, just like the unique calligraphy when you write. OpenType can provide such an artistic creation platform, and at the same time, it has an internal mechanism of copyright protection."

Speaking of this, Tang Huan pointed to the computer monitor and laser printer, "OpenType can also achieve device-independent text output effects, that is, another monitor and printer are replaced, and the display effect is still consistent."

In addition to the three concepts of internal code, external code, and exchange code in the process of informatization, characters also involve the concept of font codes in how to display them. OpenType can be understood as a tool for managing font codes.

In the original time and space, just as desktop publishing was not understood by ordinary users, fonts were also routinely ignored, but they did not know its hidden profits, as well as the several market competitions for Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft.

After introducing OpenType, Tang Huan began to introduce the second technology, PostScript, which is a page description language and programming language.

The display of the text content on the computer monitor is temporary, and after being output by the printer, it is regarded as a permanent preservation.

A number of technologies have long been used to help printers print characters—usually ASCII characters—but most of them have one thing in common, that is, characters that are physically difficult to change, such as the metal on a typewriter key or Strips like optical flats.

That is to say, when outputting in batches, it is almost impossible to achieve personalized fonts and flexible typesetting styles.

But things began to change with the popularity of dot-matrix printers.

Because on these systems, characters are "drawn" as a series of dots, and these dots are defined as fonts.

Obviously, fonts provide storage space for fonts managed by OpenType.

At the same time, dot matrix printers also have the ability to print bitmaps.

Each type of printer has different methods in terms of text and graphics output. After all, Xerox, HP, and Epson are not the only manufacturers engaged in printer development and production.

Therefore, programmers have to create many drivers to print using the control language of various printers. As a result, the workload is really unimaginable.

Unless another special device—a plotter is used for output, because it shares a common language—HPGL, but its main function is to print graphics, and it is expensive, slow, and lacks the foundation for popular use.

PostScript is to solve the confusion caused by different printers fighting each other in terms of output implementation. It is like a public protocol. As long as the computer sends PostScript, whether it is a laser printer or a dot matrix printer, it has not even entered Inkjet printers in the mature commercial stage can perform the same output.

After Tang Huan explained the main points of PostScript in general, he invited John Warnock, an expert in this field—John Warnock.

In the original time and space, the idea of ​​the PostScript language originated in 1976 when John Warnock was at the computer graphics company Evans and Sutherland.

At that time, John Warnock was developing an interpreter for a large three-dimensional graphics database in New York Harbor, and he eventually designed a Design System language that was very similar to the Forth programming language to process graphics.

In 1978, Evans and Sutherland asked John Warnock to leave the San Francisco Bay to work at the Utah headquarters, but the dude didn't want to move there.So he joined Xerox's PARC instead.

And Xerox, which developed the world's first laser printer, is trying to find a standard page control language for its laser printer. John Warnock has a place to use, and Martin Newell-Martin Newell work together.

They rewrote the Design System and developed the John and Martin - JaM system, which later evolved into an extended system called InterPress.

According to the historical development, in December 1982, John Warnock and Chuck Geschke—Charles Geschke left PARC together to create the famous Adobe Systems company.

However, in this time and space, Tang Huan paid special attention to printers from the very beginning. When the Epson printer reached 16 pins, it was equipped with a dedicated chip that could understand and execute PostScript, so the development speed of this technology was faster than that of PARC. much.

PARC, which is honored as the "cradle", not only ran out of its own people to start a business, but other companies also came to poach the wall, Tang Huan naturally would not be polite.

Jobs only focused on talents related to graphical user interface technology, but Tang Huan knew that the valuable things in PARC were by no means limited to this, and laser printers and John Warnock were just one of the many poaching results.

After pushing John Warnock onto the stage, Tang Huan thought with a smile that it was almost time to establish Adobe, which was yet another gold-absorbing monster.

While introducing PostScript, John Warnock demonstrated PageMaker, the core software for desktop publishing newly developed by Zheru.

According to historical development, this tool will not be released by Aldus until 1985.

In order to promote the desktop publishing system, PageMaker was naturally developed by Tang Huan in advance, and this is the first one, and other supporting software will be launched later.

In the original time and space, Apple, which swept Jobs out, could not survive only with outdated hardware MAC and the so-called graphical user interface, so it also embarked on the path of opening up a new field-desktop publishing system, this application It can be called an industrial revolution, and it also allowed Apple to survive until the 1990s.

At that time, Apple launched its own laser printer LaserWriter, and then cooperated with Aldus' desktop publishing software PageMaker and Adobe's PostScript to form the 3A alliance, which gave birth to a new industry-desktop publishing system.

Just like the Disk II floppy disk controller invented by Woz in 1978, which greatly increased the sales of Apple II, the LaserWriter in 1985 also made MAC really useful.

The price of laser printers in this period was high. The HP LaserJet was priced at $2995, and the Apple LaserWriter with a more powerful processor and Postscript page description language was priced at $7000. This undoubtedly became the Macintosh with a price of around $2500. Another important profit point besides 128K/512K.

And this year, Xerox launched the Xerox Star 8010, a laser printer with many innovations that can be used in a single computer, priced at up to $17000.

But in 1979, Japan's Canon developed a cheaper version of the Canon LBP-10, and based on this, it greatly improved the printing engine and named it Canon CX. HP and Apple's laser printers use this technology license, and the profits can be Just imagine.

Business users are not like personal users. Once the demand is opened, thousands of dollars of equipment are still not hesitate to sell, and they can be tied up through software stickiness.

Tang Huan glanced at the audience, thinking in his heart that Don Estridge should have come to the scene. After copying the successful case of spreadsheet software to promote the sales of Apple II to IBM-PC, he will definitely find that he is still behind several steps.

Although there were thousands of participants, most of them looked up and stared at the stage seriously.Tang Huan condescended, searched step by step, and found the target.

Don Estridge is a man who often laughs, but at this time, he is very serious.

For a long time, IBM has been focusing on hardware and software to provide users with a package of solutions. The pinnacle of it is naturally the mainframe system System/360. No matter what type of model, the software interface can be consistent. In turn, it brings the greatest convenience to users, so it has the most understanding of the importance of software.

Don Estridge has a vague feeling that now Tang Huan is applying IBM's model. After establishing his own hardware platform, he will continue to open up new areas of software applications to drive hardware sales.

Moreover, this speed is astonishing. In stark contrast to this, IBM's new products have to go through various procedures from project approval to listing. It takes at least two or three years. If it takes three to five years, it is not surprising. .

However, Tang Huan developed the electronic form software CGrid and rose rapidly, and now it has only been two full years. It is only a mere IBM product cycle, but in the fields of electronic forms, word processing, databases, and now the so-called desktop publishing The action is constant.

The reason why the huge IBM has been able to stand in the industry for decades is largely due to its conservative business strategy. Naturally, it cannot be compared with Tang Huan, who is running barefoot. And really worrying.

In the era of mainframes, it is normal for the product life cycle to be maintained at about ten years, but the replacement of microcomputers is your show. It has only been six years since the earliest personal computer, the Altair of MITS, came out in 1975. , but the entire industry has begun to enter the stage of the third generation of personal computers that Tang Huan claimed. It is obvious that if you move slowly, you will not be able to grab food.

How can we break this situation where we are one step behind, step by step behind?Don Estridge couldn't help frowning his thick eyebrows.

It is of course possible to catch up with IBM's internal resources, but even if you sit as the president of IBM, you may not be able to make all departments work together sincerely. A personal computer worth thousands of dollars cannot mobilize their enthusiasm.

From this point of view, the only way to find thugs is from the outside.

Thinking of this, Don Estridge started to have a headache.

In order to let the operating system DOS come out smoothly, IBM has spent a lot of effort to train Microsoft. These mobs don’t have a complete concept of software engineering and quality control. It takes a lot of effort to teach and learn, but in the end they still make wedding dresses for others. It makes people feel unwilling.

Don Estridge shook his head again and again, which aroused the surprised eyes of others.

(End of this chapter)