The little noticed announcement by DEC that it had integrated Adobe Systems Inc’s Display Postscript software into its DECwindows workstation architecture legitimises the decision of Steve Jobs’ Next Inc to integrate Display Postscript with its forthcoming scholar’s workstation, and indicates the direction Adobe plans to take as its market among laser printer manufacturers begins to mature. The DECwindows program is intended to provide users with network-transparent application programming interfaces for windowing, graphics and user interface services for its systems under the VMS, Ultrix and MS-DOS operating systems. The DECwindows architecture is based on the X Window System developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Display Postscript software brings to the screen the same graphics imaging capability as Postscript brings to printers and typesetters. Application developers get a programming interface to the complete range of Postscript’s graphic and font facilities, enabling them to create their images within a window in a fully device-independent manner. Adobe, Mountain View, is actively seeking other licensees for the screen version of its page description language. DEC has also joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new X Consortium, formed to champion X Window as a standard; the other members Tektronix, Hewlett-Packard, Sequent Computer Systems CalComp and AT&T.
