jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA.UUCP (06/08/87)
Does anyone have an opinion on whether or not it would be feasible to implement PostScript on the 8-bitters, especially one with expanded memory? The availability of PostScript, especially with drivers for the various popular dot-matrix printers, would go a long way toward keeping the 8-bitters competitive in the "Desktop Publishing" age. Should it be necessary, I would be willing to build a 1 Mbyte memory expansion board for the purpose. (I have a functional spec and most of the logic design for such an expansion for the 800XL/65XE which would be 130XE compatible up to 128K and would allow adding another full Mbyte if desired. That ought to be enough to do a lot of bit mapping for printer output!) As an "Instant Expert" on PostScript, I recently learned that it is "very similar to" Forth. I read between the lines the conclusion that perhaps it would be reasonable to implement PS using Forth as the starting point. (In fact I suspect that might be what Adobe did, since Forth is so extensible. Does anybody know if this is true?) If so, the availability of the PD Forth Compiler mentioned in an accompanying message might facilitate such a project. Comments would be appreciated. -John Sangster / jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa