Re: Canvas shortcomings

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ximian com>]

Ah, you brought into discussion my secret love!
I used to program in pure PostScript about 5 years ago, and still have
strong inclination to its beautiful and consistent syntax.

But do not forget, that PS consists of 2 parts:

1) Fort-like general purpose language. It is excellent - I think one
   of the best programming languages ever implemented.
2) Imaging opearators. These are - to not to say too much - mostly crap.

Best wishes,
Lauris Kaplinski

On 18 Jun 2001 14:43:58 -0400, Mark wrote:
> The main difference between pure Postscript and C, is that Postcript is a
> postfix language similar to forth. It has and exceution stack, a graphics
> state, and a dictionary. An equivelent C API can be made, but you loose
> the beauty and compactness of Postscript.
> 
> This beauty of Poscript lies in how you can write small programs in which
> you make new operators, and build more complex operaters based on the
> simpler ones. Poscripts programs typically have a prolog in which common
> operaters are defined. In a print setting these operaters can be reused on
> every page, thus making the progam smaller and more elegant, and also
> reducing the ammount of ram needed for the printer. In a display setting
> you can define new operators which display a button or dialog box, or some
> other graphic elements. These high level operaters can be sent directly to
> the display server, instead of serializing each line in the drawing and
> sending it to the display server. This not only reduces network traffic,
> but it is a far more elegant solution, and alows for many more
> optimizations in the server.
> 
> So hopefully you and others can see why postscript is so very beautiful,
> and why I'm so stuburn about using it ;). Of course you can always
> insulate someone from this beatuty by making a wrapper, and maybe some
> times that would be benifitial.
> 
> At least hope you realize Postscript is a fully general 2D graphics
> language. It apears most people here asociate Postscript with only
> printers[1].