wm@mushroom.COMputer-science.manchester.ac.UK (Wm Leler) (12/01/87)
> PostScript reminds me of an intermediate language generated by a > compiler, not a language suitable for human beings to think in. Perhaps the reason that PostScript is reminiscent of an intermediate language is because it was designed to be an intermediate language, generated by some program and sent to a printer. The fact that it is human readable doesn't matter (the output from typesetter independent troff is also "human readable"). > I propose a new language which is high > level, and is then compiled into postscript, ... > If you can't think of a specific language (I vote for C, or something > very much like C), indicate what language capabilities should be there. Lisp is a natural for this. Both Lisp and PostScript are dynamic, easily interpreted, treat procedures as reasonably first class objects, and have an excrutiatingly simple syntax. It is relatively easy to translate (a subset of) Lisp to PostScript, which is exactly what LispScript does. One could actually make a reasonably convincing case that PostScript is a higher level language than C (and I'm mainly a C programmer). I heard James Gosling say at a conference that some people at Sun prefer programming in PostScript to C (my guess is because, as an interpreted language, PostScript is easier to debug). If you are going to compile some higher level language into PostScript, let it be something that is reasonably good at computer graphics, for example Smalltalk. I've heard people talk about it, but is anyone actually working on a Smalltalk system that generates PostScript (or a Smalltalk that uses NeWS for user interaction)? I've love to have Smalltalk running on some big machine (a Cray?) with the graphics running on my local workstation. If you absolutely must have a static language, how about C++? You could define abstract data types for dictionaries and other PostScript datatypes. > Send today, I'll also bring this up at the Sun User's Group meeting Monday! Perhaps they are working on a Smalltalk with NeWS? Or would know about any projects to compile other languages into PostScript. Wm Leler The PIX Project University of Manchester
Ballard.pa@XEROX.COM (Stoney Ballard) (12/02/87)
> If you are going to compile some higher level language into PostScript, > let it be something that is reasonably good at computer graphics, for > example Smalltalk. I've heard people talk about it, but is anyone > actually working on a Smalltalk system that generates PostScript (or > a Smalltalk that uses NeWS for user interaction)? I've love to have > Smalltalk running on some big machine (a Cray?) with the graphics > running on my local workstation. Well, actually we at PARC/SCL (the Smalltalk group) are doing just that. It's not clear at this point just how we are going to make Smalltalk use NeWS - we're going to try a few alternatives to see what feels best. One of our goals is to completely hide PostScript from the application programmers, not because it's an icky language, but because it doesn't participate in the object world of Smalltalk. This is a major change to the structure of the Smalltalk user interface and graphics primitives. We don't expect to have it completed anytime soon. - Stoney Ballard Xerox PARC NW