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From: louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: "file" operator disabled on NeXT 2.0
Message-ID: <1991Jan21.225155.6821@ni.umd.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 91 22:51:55 GMT
References: <4900@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <2177@autodesk.COM> <mdixon.664489442@owl>
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Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
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>    So what? I can send you a piece of C code to do the same. Why is this
>    more dangerous inyour view?
>
>because the mail reader doesn't automatically execute pieces of c code
>that it finds in messages.  if you've decided to use postscript as
>your standard for sending graphics around, you need to assume that
>people will execute it without reading it first, and take appropriate
>precautions.

This is all very fine and good as an explanation, given that anyone is
actually sending around PostScript inside their mail messages, which I
don't believe is in wide use quite yet.  I suspect that if you have a
mail agent that interprets PostScript for graphical display, you have
any number of other issues that need to be worried about as well.  The
'file' operatore is likely only a small problem.  Consider that the
Display PostScript interpreter is used to feed input events into
the terminal emulators.  Lots of interesting ground to cover here...

On the other hand, I was using the file operator with the distill.ps
package frequently.  This PostScript program really shows that having
Display PostScript available is a big win.  This was an application
that was WORKING JUST FINE BEFORE, but is BROKEN NOW.  (Excuse me for
yelling.)  The 'file' operator no longer conforms to the description
in any documentation (NeXT or Adboe).  The release notes don't mention
any change.  The chapter in the online documentation which describes
NeXT specific or modified PostScript operators doesn't mention it.  If
NeXT wants to impose some restrictions on the file operator, that's
fine; just document it and describe how my working application needs
to be modified to work under 2.0.

This is a BUG, not a feature. (Or a buggy feature, depending upon how
you look at it).


louie