Project Vision and Goals

Introduction to the Camelot Project's mission to solve fundamental communication problems with visual material in modern companies.

The Camelot Project represents a foundational initiative to address a critical challenge facing modern organizations: the inability to effectively communicate visual material between different computer applications and systems.

While most programs can print to various printers, there exists no universal method to communicate and view printed information across different platforms and environments.

This project aims to establish the base technology and methodologies necessary to bridge this fundamental gap in cross-platform visual communication capabilities.

Current Technology Limitations

Analysis of why Display PostScript and PostScript solutions fall short in today's computing environment, requiring powerful desktop machines and specialized printers.

Display PostScript and PostScript solutions, while technically sound, are not viable for widespread adoption in today's computing environment due to their demanding hardware requirements.

These solutions require powerful desktop machines and specialized PostScript printers, making them inaccessible to the vast majority of current users operating with standard hardware configurations.

While Display PostScript represents the correct long-term solution as machine capabilities increase over time, it offers minimal assistance to today's users with existing technology constraints.

PostScript Rebinding Concept

Detailed explanation of PostScript file processing and rebinding using a 10-sided polygon example to demonstrate derivative file generation.

PostScript rebinding enables the processing of one PostScript file into another form while maintaining equivalent output, creating derivative files that are often simpler and use fewer operators than the original.

This procedure demonstrates how PostScript files can have side effects that differ significantly from normal page printing, allowing for the generation of derivative files through the rebinding process.

The rebinding operation illustrates a capability of the PostScript language that is infrequently utilized but provides powerful opportunities for file transformation and optimization.

PostScript procedure that builds a path for a ten-sided polygon using moveto and lineto operators
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/poly
  {1 0 moveto
   /ang 36 def
   10 {ang cos ang sin lineto
       /ang ang 36 add def
      }repeat
   }def

IPS File Format Design

Overview of the Intermediate PostScript (IPS) format and binder implementation for capturing and converting PostScript files with font handling solutions.

The Intermediate PostScript (IPS) format addresses the critical challenge of font availability by creating self-contained files that include all necessary font information embedded within the document.

Current implementations rely on complex font substitution schemes to handle locations lacking appropriate fonts, creating compatibility and fidelity issues across different printing environments.

Once the IPS binder is implemented, users can capture any PostScript file from a PostScript driver and convert it to a self-contained IPS file that can be transmitted across networks and printed on any PostScript machine with accompanying management utilities.

Device Independence Requirements

Critical requirement for device-independent IPS file format to enable electronic archiving and universal printability across different locations.

Device independence is essential for IPS files to print on color or black-and-white machines across low and high resolution devices.

Electronic archiving capabilities enable entire libraries to be stored digitally with guaranteed printability at any location.