[comp.windows.news] NeWS faults

rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) (09/07/88)

"PostScript is like Chinese food--- an hour later you can't understand what
you had written."  Reverse Polish languages are very powerful compared to
the amount of computer resources they require, but force the programmer to
think in contorted non-problem oriented manner.

On another topic I find NeWS very defficient it its imaging capabilities.
You have no control over how an image is interpolated onto pixels or good
color models.  There are scientific data images that I don't want distorted by
spline interpolation.  Jim Gosling, one of NeWS architects, desires to be
independent of bitplane and color table hardware.  I believe that the settransfer
function can be generalized for color mapping between one description of
color (e.g. psuedo-color) into the displayed image without making it machine
dependent.

peterson@SW.MCC.COM (James Peterson) (09/08/88)

> "PostScript is like Chinese food--- an hour later you can't understand what
> you had written." 

I can write similar code in any language I write; To prevent this, I try
to write code which is commented, uses meaningful variable names, small
and meaningful procedures, and so on.  As a result, I have had no problem
reading, understanding and modifying PostScript code 3 to 4 months after
it was written.  I would suggest that problems like this are a failure of
the writer, not the language.

jim