🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C1D9BE.AB7@cs.mcgill.ca>
	samurai@cs.mcgill.ca (Darcy BROCKBANK) writes:
>I guess NeXT does not use DPS. 
>
>I guess they didn't pioneer it either. From what I gather
>it was NeXT's idea in the first place to use PostScript on
>the display. Everyone else thought that PostScript was too
>slow for an interactive display.

Ever heard of NeWS?  Which runs on Suns?  It's not _Adobe_ PostScript,
but it is PostScript nonetheless.  Especially when looking over the
client library calls, it looks more like DPS than not.  For instance,
psh, which many NeXT users are familiar with, was apparently one of
the first NeWS programs available.  The server was multi-threaded,
with separate contexts.  It had garbage collection.  You could connect
over the network.  It had it's own version of pswrap, cps, which
converted .cps files into .c files.  Sun has a NeWSPrinter (sp?) which
uses NeWS to rasterize and dumb printing engine to do the actual
printing.  In fact, it even used object-oriented stuff within the
server, something the NeXT doesn't do.  It also tended to put much
more functionality in the server via postscript routines, whereas NeXT
puts more emphasis on the client side (these both have advantages and
disadvantages, of course).  And there are probably more NeWS programs
out there than NeXT programs.

I use past tense above, because NeWS is apparently at an end.  Sun
will still support it, but it is being supplanted by DPS.

[Disclaimer: I found out most of what I know about NeWS _after_ having
worked on the NeXT for a couple years.  So, perhaps I was seeing some
similarities that weren't really there.  But I do think that NeWS was
written with the DPS documentation in mind :-).]

Later,
--
scott hess <shess@ssesco.com>                        <To the BatCube, Robin>
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326  Burnsville, MN 55337 (612) 895-1208 Anytime!