🚀 go-pugleaf

Dick Dunn writes rather facinating articles.  However, he is quite wrong
in some assumptions.  First, PS is a GENERAL PURPOSE programming language
with an imaging model as it's base.  It is everybit as potent and powerful
as anything you can stack it up against, APL might be more compact, and better
at marices, but PS can handle most of that as well.  Because of that, it
is useful for lots more than printing.  I have a ps printer setting on
my desk at home.  90% of the time it is NOT doing printing.  It is just
sitting there.  Why not offload some computing work on it.  It is, afterall
a 68000 with full floating point math, and a file system.  There is no reason
not to use it.  Yes it is a "hackers" dream.  Not by the current definition
of "hacker", but by the classic definition "one who knows more about a machine
because he takes the time to explore it more throughly that 99% of the people
out there".  The guru type hackers.  I am NOT an amature "hacker".  I am a
classic "hacker".  I look for as much power out of a machine (it costs > $5000)
 remember.  The decision to cripple the printer by going to 7 bit ascii
(who uses that?  That disappeared with OCTAL for crying outloud!) is a rather
serious mistake, because it severly limits what you can do with the machine.
more odious, however is the inability to create a truely TRANSPARENT channel
where control D', C's, T's etc can get through.  That is teh real problem.
As for the bit blitter, consider:  I have a program that I used heavily.
The program prints business cards.  IT draws 10 cards to a page.  Doing anything
facny like grayfilled shaded letters, or curved printing takes a while.  
It takes a LOT of time, sometimes 20 min to image a real complex card.  I don't
have the luxury of that amount of time when I'm setting at a table at a
fair or fleamarket making business cards on demand.  All that interpreting
is slow, even with a 18mhz 68000.  the code is Crisp, that is the PS
code is optimized for speed, but it takes more time than it needs to.
I need to be able to image 1 card, then pick it up and "rubber stamp" it
all over the page.  In addition, I do mailing labels.  Drawing the boarders
for 33 labels, then going back and filling them in takes time.  Bit
blitting would help tremendously.  I don't use my printer for "type setting
" that much, but rather as a general purpose printer, and graphics
printer.  I also use it as a tool for general programming.

It apparent that Dick never had an ounce of curiosity, nor grew up during
the early 70's with microcomputers.  I started programming micros back
in 76, when a 256 BYTE machine was normal, and no one knew what to  curiosity
bumps.  We dug through code to see how it was written, what it did, and
how to wring the most possible out of both it and the machine.  That kind
of poking and prying is still valuable.  Perhaps I am a bit of a hacker,
if some one tells me something is "off limits" etc, I'm going to find out
why.

This discussion group is not a place for flames, or diatriabes or even 
personal attacks.  So right now, I will say, that I have just violated that
with the above paragraph, and I applogize for that. 

The Rom monitor was installed for testing, and debugging.  It is still 
useful for that.  Wouldn't you love to be able to retrieve the bitmap?
amoung other things?  The only way apparently to find out how to do that,
is either to pay Adobe a chunck, or go get it your self.  Dick, If you want
to pay for the information for my, if you can get Adobe to turn lose of it
I'll shut up and crawl back in my hole, but until that time, I am going
to keep digging.  The only way up, is down.

Cheers

Woody
  
16K of memory.  People who grew up through that era developed large curiosiutsoh