richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (05/03/89)
The person I share an office with has used PS only in the
context of doing some simple work with NeWS on a Silly Graphics
Iris. He understands it quite well however and is in love with
the language, and particularly likes that fact that 1) You write
programs in the thing, not just write commands at it and 2) everything
is ascii.
So when I told him about this ^D discussion we were having, he was
appalled there there was this piece of *BINARY* in an otherwise
perfectly ascii language.
``Why didn't they make it a 64 character unique string'' He asked.
--
``The way to heaven is through weasel lore!'' - Ted Kaldis
richard@gryphon.COM decwrl!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOVbatcheldern@hannah.dec.com (Ned Batchelder, PostScript Eng.) (05/04/89)
In article <15402@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >So when I told him about this ^D discussion we were having, he was >appalled there there was this piece of *BINARY* in an otherwise >perfectly ascii language. Your friend (or you, but no need to point fingers) missed the crucial point: ^D is NOT a component of the PostScript language. It is a widely accepted method for indicating end-of-file to serial-line PostScript printers. This is exactly analogous to the use of ^S to do flow control. It isn't part of PostScript; it's part of the printer protocol. There are printers (and other PostScript interpreters) which don't know a ^D from any other control character. A challenge: find where in the Red Book ^D is discussed (except in appendix D, for those of you with old Red Books). Ned Batchelder Digital Equipment Corporation BatchelderN@Hannah.DEC.com
dkelly@npiatl.UUCP (Dwight Kelly) (05/05/89)
^D over appletalk will give you an undefined operator error.
---
Dwight Kelly UUCP: gatech!npiatl!dkelly
Director R&D AT&T: (404) 962-7220
Network Publications, Inc 2 Pamplin Drive Lawrenceville, GA 30245
Publisher of "The Real Estate Book" nationwide!richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (05/07/89)
In article <8905041304.AA26209@decwrl.dec.com> batcheldern@hannah.dec.com (Ned Batchelder, PostScript Eng.) writes: >In article <15402@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >>So when I told him about this ^D discussion we were having, he was >>appalled there there was this piece of *BINARY* in an otherwise >>perfectly ascii language. > >Your friend (or you, but no need to point fingers) No, I really do have a friend. Really. >missed the crucial >point: ^D is NOT a component of the PostScript language. It is a >widely accepted method for indicating end-of-file to serial-line PostScript >printers. This is exactly analogous to the use of ^S to do flow >control. It isn't part of PostScript; it's part of the printer protocol. >There are printers (and other PostScript interpreters) which don't know >a ^D from any other control character. I don't really care about thei ^D issue much at all. I can certainly see both sides of the coin. Certainly at some point somebody will write a PostScript spooler/device handler that can have files redirected to it, and certainly sombody will someday fix broken UNIX spoolers that barf when they see a ^D at the beginning. My question really, based on my friends observation, was thet, why isn't there an ascii end of file indicator ? >A challenge: find where in the Red Book ^D is discussed (except in >appendix D, for those of you with old Red Books). A biger challange: find my red book. -- ``*CONSENT*??? I gotta chase her off with a stick.'' - Ted Kaldis richard@gryphon.COM decwrl!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOV
les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (05/08/89)
In article <8905041304.AA26209@decwrl.dec.com> batcheldern@hannah.dec.com (Ned Batchelder, PostScript Eng.) writes: >A challenge: find where in the Red Book ^D is discussed (except in >appendix D, for those of you with old Red Books). How many places does something have to appear in an official reference manual to make it official. (My red book has it..). Perhaps we should have a separate discussion about printers that emulate the apple laserwriter and stop talking about ^D and postscript. Les Mikesell
langdon@lll-lcc.UUCP (Bruce Langdon) (05/17/89)
In article <15526@gryphon.COM>, richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: > In article <8905041304.AA26209@decwrl.dec.com> batcheldern@hannah.dec.com (Ned Batchelder, PostScript Eng.) writes: > >In article <15402@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: > ..., and certainly sombody will someday fix broken UNIX spoolers > that barf when they see a ^D at the beginning. The SPOOLER is broken? > My question really, based on my friends observation, was thet, why > isn't there an ascii end of file indicator ? I have seen ascii FS (file separator?) used for this. Anyway, on any reasonable system it's easy to recognize eof, at least if the input is coming from a file. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Langdon L-472 langdon@lll-lcc.llnl.gov Physics Department 14363%f@nmfecc.llnl.gov Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, CA 94550 (415) 422-5444 UUCP: ..{qantel,ucdavis,pyramid,harvard,topaz}!lll-lcc!langdon