🚀 go-pugleaf

> Well...  I dunno.  I mean, interpreted PostScript is plenty quick (in NeWS,
> for example), but it has it's share of primitive aspects.  Dictionaries are a
> particularly nice way of having dynamic binding environments available as
> first class data structures, but the rest of the language leaves some things
> to be desired when it comes to general programming, and programming in the
> large scale in particular.  It's kind of like Forth in this respect--writing
> code to handle single operations is fine, but I wouldn't want to write a
> large application in it, even though it could be done.

There have been some mighty large and powerful systems written in FORTH.
because of it's extensibility, which it shares with PS, you can literaly
build layer upon layer, until you can write an entire GL package with just
1 screen of code.  I'n not a fan of FORTH, but it is a very capable language.
It seems that most people are unwilling to look at PS as anything other than
a fancy printer controler command set.  I have found no major or minor
deficiences in the language, other than some limited I/O and the lack of
arctan, arcsin, and arccos.  With the addition of a disk, we have a full
computer.  I challenge you to pinpoint *ANY* major deficiency of PS for 
general purpose programming.  There is no reason, other than predjudice,
that one could not implement say a mailing list manager, using the hard
disk, and generating forms and labels within the printer.  Or a GL
package, or anyother program.  Considering that you can write ANY
program in this world with a computer that has one instruction, and 8
data constants, you certainly can write it for ps.

P.S.  The one instruction

subjne address1,address2,address3

subtract address contents 1 from address contents 2 and jump to address 3
on non-zero.  The constants, 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,0xff, and 0.

Cheers
Woody
2
> Amanda Walker
> InterCon Systems Corporation
> --