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From: rodgers@csc.wcc.govt.nz
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Adobe PPD files
Message-ID: <1195.258286bc@csc.wcc.govt.nz>
Date: 10 Dec 89 04:39:24 GMT
References: <1025@maxim.erbe.se> <17380@rpp386.cactus.org> <2140@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl> <17422@rpp386.cactus.org>
Organization: Wellington City Council
Lines: 52

In article <17422@rpp386.cactus.org>, woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) writes:
> In article <2140@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>, piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum) writes:
>> In article <17380@rpp386.cactus.org> woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) writes:
>>> `DON'T change the serverdict password.
>>
>> Well, isn't that a very silly thing: a password that you shouldn't change
>> and should always have the default value. What if one of our students
>> decide to change it? Which they can do if the password is 0. It shouldn't
>> be too difficult to keep the password around: write it on a piece of paper
>> and lock it somewhere. Keep it with your Laserprinter bill, with your tax
>> administration, write it in your will :=),...
>
> yes, it is a very silly thing.  It should not have been a part of Postscript
> in the first place.

The fact is that exitserver is *not* a part of the PostScript
language.  Try looking it up in the red book.  In some editions, its
not there at all.  In my edition its in the appendix about the
LaserWriter where it says:

    The special operators are intended for use by human users or
    by host software carying out user requests; ordinarilly, page
    descriptions should not refer to them, since doing so would impair
    portability of those descriptions.

So there is no guarantee that exitserver exists on all implementations
or that if it does that the password will be 0.  A case in point is
the DEC LN03R ScriptPrinter.  This does have exitserver but the
password is a string not an integer.  The default is (LN03R).  I
couldn't change the password to 0 if I wanted to so any application
that relies on it being 0 is destined to fail.

On the other hand, I do agree that exiting the server loop is
sometimes a very desirable thing to do.  On the other hand, it is
often undesirable.  Properly written software should give you a choice
and if you decide to do it, it should let you tell it how to go about
it.

On the whole changing the exitserver password is a very good idea.
Passwords are there as a security measure after all so what is the
point of having a password everyone knows and let's face it,
a malicious user who knew could do some real harm.  If changing the
password also causes poorly written software to fail then that is a
bonus.

As Piet van Oostrum says, forgetting the password is not really an
issue.  Can you imagine a Unix sysadmin who decided not to have a root
password for fear of forgetting it?
--
Mark Rodgers                                          Computer Services Section
rodgers@wcc.govt.nz                                     Wellington City Council
Telephone (04) 733-130                    P.O.Box 2199, Wellington, New Zealand