🚀 go-pugleaf

I just want to note that it is completely inconsequential whether or
not the syntax of a programming language is context-free.  The
important thing for compiling is that run-time dependencies can be
effectively circumscribed.

Since postscript is most likely already implemented as threaded code,
like forth, it is already compiled in some trivial sense.  At the
other end of the trivial spectrum, postscript is "compiled" when a
showpage is executed, where the bitmap image of a page has lost all
symbolic information about its own construction.

However, there are many other notions of "Compiling" which are not
captured by these simplistic notions. In particular, most modern
compilers worry more about optimization than translation.

Threaded code can be speeded up by being expanded into machine
language control, in-line expansions and subroutine calls, which can
lead to a time gain of 10% (in avoiding procedure calls and returns).
Variables could be detected and replaced with stack operations.
Invariant operations can be moved outside of loops.  Short loops can
be unrolled. Efficient registers could be
allocated instead of stack space, and so on.

However, postscript is a "throwaway" language, and any effort at such
optimization probably wouldnt be very cost effective.  To justify such
a tremendous project (other than as a long-term way to silence an
arrogant undergraduate hacker!) one would at least need a very large
and slow postscript program which had to be run lots of times with complex and
varying input. The only such program I could think of would be a
postscript compiler written in postscript...

--
Jordan Pollack				Laboratory for AI Research
CIS Dept/OSU				
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