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From: forrest@ux1.lbl.gov (Jon Forrest)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: An Idea to Help Make Postscript Easier to Read (and Write)
Message-ID: <940@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 5 Sep 88 17:23:57 GMT
Sender: usenet@helios.ee.lbl.gov
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
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I'm a newcomer to Postscript and have been spending lots of time
recently reading the standard Postscript material. One thing that
has struck me is how hard it is to get used to a stack based
language after being a Fortran and C programmer for so long.
If I has been a Forth or HP calculator programmer I probably
wouldn't have this problem.

Anyway, an idea occurred to me that would help people like me
read (and eventually write) Postscript. I thought I'd run it by
this newsgroup to see what you all think.

What about a "compiler" that converts standard postscript into
what I'll call infix/function form? In otherwords, the output would
look something like Fortran or C and would consist of infix arithmetic
and logical operators, and functions calls. The control operators
would also look like C/Pascal control structures. As a companion
to such a compiler would be another program that would take Postscript
written in this form and output standard Postscript. Note that
neither program would change the semantics of a Postscript program
in any way.

There may be technical reasons why such an approach wouldn't work 
that I haven't thought of, given my inexperience.  Or, it may be
the case, as a friend of mine whose judgement I respect claimed,
that so few people actually read and write Postscript that actually
writing such programs wouldn't be worthwhile.

I'd appreciate hearing any comments about this idea.

Jon Forrest
FORREST@LBL.GOV
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