Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!rpp386!woody From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: *COMPLETE* Postscript Description Summary: huh?? Message-ID: <17480@rpp386.cactus.org> Date: 21 Dec 89 23:14:25 GMT References: <28@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <1989Dec21.000312.3330@ico.isc.com> Distribution: comp Organization: River Parishes Programming, Plano, TX Lines: 61 Dick Dunn writes rather facinating articles. However, he is quite wrong in some assumptions. First, PS is a GENERAL PURPOSE programming language with an imaging model as it's base. It is everybit as potent and powerful as anything you can stack it up against, APL might be more compact, and better at marices, but PS can handle most of that as well. Because of that, it is useful for lots more than printing. I have a ps printer setting on my desk at home. 90% of the time it is NOT doing printing. It is just sitting there. Why not offload some computing work on it. It is, afterall a 68000 with full floating point math, and a file system. There is no reason not to use it. Yes it is a "hackers" dream. Not by the current definition of "hacker", but by the classic definition "one who knows more about a machine because he takes the time to explore it more throughly that 99% of the people out there". The guru type hackers. I am NOT an amature "hacker". I am a classic "hacker". I look for as much power out of a machine (it costs > $5000) remember. The decision to cripple the printer by going to 7 bit ascii (who uses that? That disappeared with OCTAL for crying outloud!) is a rather serious mistake, because it severly limits what you can do with the machine. more odious, however is the inability to create a truely TRANSPARENT channel where control D', C's, T's etc can get through. That is teh real problem. As for the bit blitter, consider: I have a program that I used heavily. The program prints business cards. IT draws 10 cards to a page. Doing anything facny like grayfilled shaded letters, or curved printing takes a while. It takes a LOT of time, sometimes 20 min to image a real complex card. I don't have the luxury of that amount of time when I'm setting at a table at a fair or fleamarket making business cards on demand. All that interpreting is slow, even with a 18mhz 68000. the code is Crisp, that is the PS code is optimized for speed, but it takes more time than it needs to. I need to be able to image 1 card, then pick it up and "rubber stamp" it all over the page. In addition, I do mailing labels. Drawing the boarders for 33 labels, then going back and filling them in takes time. Bit blitting would help tremendously. I don't use my printer for "type setting " that much, but rather as a general purpose printer, and graphics printer. I also use it as a tool for general programming. It apparent that Dick never had an ounce of curiosity, nor grew up during the early 70's with microcomputers. I started programming micros back in 76, when a 256 BYTE machine was normal, and no one knew what to curiosity bumps. We dug through code to see how it was written, what it did, and how to wring the most possible out of both it and the machine. That kind of poking and prying is still valuable. Perhaps I am a bit of a hacker, if some one tells me something is "off limits" etc, I'm going to find out why. This discussion group is not a place for flames, or diatriabes or even personal attacks. So right now, I will say, that I have just violated that with the above paragraph, and I applogize for that. The Rom monitor was installed for testing, and debugging. It is still useful for that. Wouldn't you love to be able to retrieve the bitmap? amoung other things? The only way apparently to find out how to do that, is either to pay Adobe a chunck, or go get it your self. Dick, If you want to pay for the information for my, if you can get Adobe to turn lose of it I'll shut up and crawl back in my hole, but until that time, I am going to keep digging. The only way up, is down. Cheers Woody 16K of memory. People who grew up through that era developed large curiosiutsoh