Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!adobe!jeynes From: jeynes@adobe.COM (Ross A. Jeynes) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: *COMPLETE* Postscript Description (was: Using a postscript printer for previewing?) Keywords: unlisted instructions Message-ID: <1531@adobe.UUCP> Date: 15 Dec 89 01:24:42 GMT References: <28@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <17433@rpp386.cactus.org> <5775@cps3xx.UUCP> Reply-To: jeynes@adobe.UUCP (Ross A. Jeynes) Distribution: comp Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View Lines: 34 In article <5775@cps3xx.UUCP> smithda@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu (J. Daniel Smith) writes: >work. Doesn't Adobe know that there are people determined to find >this kind of stuff out, and its just a matter of time before all their >secrets are common knowledge? > >I find it a bit silly that people are using ROM monitors to find >"secret" PostScript commands when Adobe's "red book" claims to be the >complete discription of the PostScript language. I realize that Adobe Hi, Yes, Adobe does realize that people are determined to find this stuff out. Most of the code that you're talking about, however, is very device- dependent. Besides that, things like ROM monitors aren't typically useful in a page description. :-) PostScript was designed to make marks on a page, and that's what it's best at. There just aren't very many people who need to know about PS ROM monitors, and those who do will find it out, as you have observed. Anyway, if we published information about the limited ROM monitor capabilities (that are completely device-dependent), people would probably just complain that our ROM monitor was lame and needed to be fixed. What I'm getting at here is that we're not trying to "keep secrets" from the world; there are other reasons behind the decision to not document the ROM monitor, etc. We've documented the device-independent/mark-making part of PostScript quite clearly, which is the part that people need to print documents. (After all, it is a printer :-) Ross Jeynes Developer Support jeynes@adobe.com Adobe Systems Incorporated {sun|decwrl}!adobe!jeynes