Book Royalties <OT>

[Andrew Koenig]

>> Barbara and I did the typesetting ourselves for ``Ruminations on C++''
>> and ``Accelerated C++,'' sending PostScript files to the publisher.
>> I did the typesetting for ``C Traps and Pitfalls,'' sending physical
>> camera-ready pages to the publisher -- PostScript didn't exist in 1988.

Grant> Postscript level 1 was released in 1984.  It was adopted by
Grant> Apple a year or two later.  I remember using Postscript
Grant> printers on Unix systems (VAX 11/780 and Sun 3 series) in 1988.

Grant> Perhaps publishers weren't accepting Postscript in '88 but it
Grant> existed and was in fairly wide usage elsewhere.

You're completely right -- Although I was right about having to send
paper copy to the publisher, I misremembered the reason and reconstructed
it incorrectly.

Now that I think about it more carefully, the situation was as follows:
We had Apple Laserwriters available at the time, and their output was
good enough for drafts.  The publisher, however, was not equipped to
print books from PostScript input; they needed paper copy.  Moreover,
the Laserwriter output wasn't good enough, being only 300 dots/inch.
So I ran off the final copy of ``C traps and Pitfalls'' on an APS-5
phototypesetter, which produced much better output.

That'll teach me to be more careful about reconstructing vague memories.

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark