Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!agate!eris!mwm
From: mwm@eris.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal (IFF QuickDraw)
Keywords: PostScript
Message-ID: <10135@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 19 May 88 22:52:24 GMT
References: <4607@super.upenn.edu> <4WWCvzy00VoDA-hXlh@andrew.cmu.edu> <3974@gryphon.CTS.COM> <132@amtfocus.UUCP> <2542@utah-gr.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.UUCP (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 33
Posted: Thu May 19 18:52:24 1988

[Warning - I'm going pedantic.....]

In article <2542@utah-gr.UUCP> u-jmolse%sunset.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-gr.UUCP (John M. Olsen) writes:
<PostScript is a postfix language (hence, the name) so it is interpreted
<instead of compiled, but I will leave the pros/cons of this alone for now.

That PostScript is postfix has nothing to do with it being
interpreted. BASIC is infix, LISP is prefix, and both interpreters and
compilers can be found for both languages. Since converting from
(post|pre|in)fix to (post|pre|in)fix is easy (doing all those
translators in a single program is a standard undergrad programming
exercise), doing a compiler for a postfix language is no harder than
any other language. Maybe even easier, as you don't have to deal with
parens and operater precedence.

No, the reason you don't see many postscript compilers is because
there aren't many applications where they make sense. Take a typical
postscript printer - it runs a program, then throws it away. It would
probably do the same if it had compiled it to a binary. The point of a
postscript program is to generate a display. After that's done, the
program is usually discarded. Why waste time compling it?

With things like NeWS starting to appear, we may start seeing some
postscript compilers. But I expect smarter inerpreters (i.e. - compile
each line as you execute it, then you can run the compiled version
later) to appear instead.

	<mike
--
Lather was thirty years old today,			Mike Meyer
They took away all of his toys.				mwm@berkeley.edu
His mother sent newspaper clippings to him,		ucbvax!mwm
About his old friends who'd stopped being boys.		mwm@ucbjade.BITNET