Thread View: comp.lang.postscript
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4 total messages
Started by mbparker
Sat, 06 Feb 1988 06:15
IDEA! - A Text And Graphics Formatter WRITTEN IN POSTSCRIPT
Author: mbparker
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1988 06:15
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1988 06:15
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I've used Scribe, TeX, and LaTeX text formatting packages, all of which output to postscript. But after learning about what a powerful and elegant programming language postscript is, I started wondering... Why not have a text (and even graphics) formatter directly in postscript?! No preprocessing. You could send your document directly to the printer. You wouldn't have to wait for Scribe (no matter how slow postscript is, it couldn't be slower than Scribe!). And you would have total control of your document, and a full programming language at your disposal! I'm excited about the idea. Does anybody know if something like it has already been done before? If it hasn't, why not? Seems like a unique possibility! Anybody interested? Your thoughts, references, and ideas would be greatly appreciated. Mike Parker, MIT '89 mbparker@athena.mit.edu 617-225-6303
Re: IDEA! - A Text And Graphics Formatter WRITTEN IN POSTSCRIPT
Author: Stuart Schmukler
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1988 18:01
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1988 18:01
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In article <8802060615.AA20361@M66-080-5.MIT.EDU> mbparker@ATHENA.MIT.EDU writes: >Why not have a text (and even graphics) formatter directly in postscript?! >... >I'm excited about the idea. Does anybody know if something like it >has already been done before? If it hasn't, why not? Seems like >a unique possibility! These was a set of programs posted awhile ago called 'txttops' that are an early attempt at a formatter on the printer. As its author jb@csustan.UUCP [my quess at the address] states: It is quite limited but still handy for some things. However it is currently written for MS-DOS, when I tried it on an IRIS system V machine it did not seem to generate postscript that my printer liked. So, it needs work. SaS
Re: IDEA! - A Text And Graphics Formatter WRITTEN IN POSTSCRIPT
Author: Fox
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1988 22:59
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1988 22:59
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In article <8802060615.AA20361@M66-080-5.MIT.EDU> mbparker@ATHENA.MIT.EDU writes:
>
>Why not have a text (and even graphics) formatter directly in postscript?!
>I'm excited about the idea. Does anybody know if something like it
>has already been done before? If it hasn't, why not? Seems like
>a unique possibility!
>
I don't know exactly what you are aiming for, but there was once a
simple text formatter which takes a regular text file (with troff-
look-alike .commands) and concat to it a pre-written postscript
definitions....it just appends the text file at the end and the
whole thing can be sent to the printer directly. It was called
txtopt or something like that. If the author is reading this,
he probably will respond to it now.
Ray
{allegra | cadre}!pitt!cisunx!uconray
Re: IDEA! - A Text And Graphics Formatter WRITTEN IN POSTSCRIPT
Author: Gabriel Lawrence
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1988 21:30
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1988 21:30
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In article <8802060615.AA20361@M66-080-5.MIT.EDU> mbparker@ATHENA.MIT.EDU writes:
>
>I've used Scribe, TeX, and LaTeX text formatting packages, all of
>which output to postscript. But after learning about what a powerful
>and elegant programming language postscript is, I started wondering...
>
>Why not have a text (and even graphics) formatter directly in postscript?!
>...
>Your thoughts, references, and ideas would be greatly appreciated.
>...
I'm a little confused as to precisely what it is you are submitting for
comptemplation. Your subject heading would indicate that your interest lies
in harnessing the power of PostScript as a programming language. This is
a viable/interesting idea - so far as I know, the only existing mechanisms for
parsing PostScript are run-time interpreters. Just don't ask me to support
your code at some future date (as I general rule, I'll only support my own
dialects of Forth and PostScript :-)! The text of your article then describes
a text/graphic package which manipulate images using PostScript as a native
document description language. This, is not a new idea. Two packages which
run on the Mac ("Adobe Illustrator" and "Freehand") use PostScript as both
the final output text and as the screen driver/PostScript previewer. In
addition, the soon-to-be-released 68030 based PC from NeXT (Steve Jobs' new
company) features PostScript as it's native U*ix display driver. If I'm
missing the point of your idea, please clarify.
=Gabriel Lawrence=
=BBN Communications=
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