🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1651@intercon.com>, amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
> In article <17480@rpp386.cactus.org>, woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker)
> writes:
> > First, PS is a GENERAL PURPOSE programming language
> > with an imaging model as it's base.
> 
> This is true, and both the language and the imaging model are quite well
> documented.  The fact that the PostScript imaging model does not provide
> a means to "read back" the current image isn't a deficiency in Adobe's
> docs--it was a conscious design decision, and one (in fact) that I agree
> with.  300 dpi bitmaps are tractable; 2540 ones aren't, and there do in
> fact exist PostScript printers that use display lists instead of a page
> buffer (and then they render things a band at a time).
> 
> One of the nice things that NeWS does is to add a few operators (like
> "copyarea") that act on the page image without letting the programmer
> make any assumptions about its resolution, etc.
> 
> Of course, some enterprising hacker type could quite easily write a
> bit of 68000 machine code to do this and load it in with cexec...  This
> would be a much more "traditional hacker" approach than whining :-).
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Even so, no one has any obligation to help you, especially not Adobe...
> Going off on your own is just that.  No one is saying you can't hack
> your printer to your heart's content, Woody.  All some of us are saying
> is that, however nifty the things are that you find out, they're not
> part of PostScript (except for Type 1 fonts, and even that's borderline),
> and that because of this, Adobe has very valid reasons for not encouraging
> people to write PostScript code that depends on them.  They're parts of the
> LaserWriter (or maybe the Redstone controller, at best), not PostScript.
Precisely.  I'm trying to shake lose enough information to do just that.
The only 2 things that I haven't got down about cexec ar how to set the 
relocation tables up, what they refer to, and some more of the system
calls.  I have doped out the important ones, dealing with getting and putting
objects on the stack, and some of the other support stuff.  I'm not
"whining", I hav a fundamental diffrence of opinion with Adobe, and perhaps
other folks, and I am taking the position that the information should be
made available.  Secondarily, it sounds like NeWs (whatever that is)
might have the equivelent of the blit blitter, in copyarea.  I'd like to
see the PS definition of the copyarea operator.


Cheers
Woody