Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!stanford.edu!lucid.com!campeau!jwz From: jwz@lucid.com (Jamie Zawinski) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: Bind problems Message-ID: Date: 6 May 91 22:39:06 GMT References: <1991May5.010114.24826@neon.Stanford.EDU> <488@heaven.woodside.ca.us> <80426796@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Sender: usenet@lucid.com Organization: Lucid, Inc., Menlo Park, CA Lines: 46 In-Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM's message of 6 May 91 10:23:40 GMT X-Windows: The art of incompetence. In article <80426796@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) wrote: > In article jwz@lucid.com (Jamie Zawinski) writes: >>I think the problem is using insanely short identifier names. This isn't >>AppleSoft Basic! > > No, but it frequently is serially transmitted. The urge to keep > spooling time to a minimum is a natural one. When you reach the point > where you're picking weird names to try and survive, there's something > wrong. If you will recall, what I said was > I think the problem is using insanely short identifier names. This isn't > AppleSoft Basic! If you're doing something like > > /p /show load def > > then I can respect that, because it's probably to reduce file size. But if > you're doing > > /test { /p exch def p show } bind def > > then you've probably got no excuse. I am not suggesting that the non-prolog part of PostScript files look like (foo) draw-one-word-at-current-point (bar) draw-one-word-at-current-point (baz) draw-one-word-at-current-point but I am suggesting that, in the prolog sections, nominally local variables should have long names. To do otherwise is an affront to all that is holy. You shouldn't be "picking weird names to try and survive." You should be picking meaningful identifiers because it's good programming style in any language. If you are writing a prolog that is large enough to be a transmission-time hit in and of itself, like the prologs generated by most mac programs, and by Adobe Illustrator, then you're doing something wrong already. It's not really very hard AT ALL to structure your PostScript-producing application to dump out only the subroutines which are necessary to a particular document. If I'm just printing text, I don't need all those routines to screw around with RGB values and curves, thank you very much. -- Jamie