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Here's the source code for the classic PizzaTool demo (BTW, I've just looked on Google Maps, and I think that Tony & Alba's pizza place in Mountain View no long

Here's the source code for the classic PizzaTool demo (BTW, I've just looked on Google Maps, and I think that Tony & Alba's pizza place in Mountain View no longer exists): http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt ...and here's a link to a HN thread a few months ago where Don Hopkins talks about Postscript and windowing systems; lots of good links there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13196983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13196983

arethuza 10y ago
I actually worked on a project that used NeWS (actually HyperNeWS) as a front end for a Lisp based AI system written in Common Lisp. HyperNeWS could do some neat things - e.g. you could draw a shape (any shape!) in the graphical editor and paste it as the shape of a window, all without writing any code. Edit: changed "uses" to "used" - was quite a long time ago!
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  I really miss HyperNeWS [1], which I worked on with Arthur van Hoff at the Turing Institute, and I used it to port SimCity to NeWS on Unix [2]. Arthur van Hoff (who developed HyperNeWS and other stuff like Java [3]) and I are working together again, this time at his 360° VR video camera company, JauntVR [4]! I'm developing a secret project called HyperJaunt, that I can't say anything about yet, but you can guess by the name that I'm pretty excited about it! ;) We are looking for a lead software engineer with leadership experience in Amsterdam! [5] [1] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/ http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/ [2] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/HyperLook-SimCity.gif http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/HyperLook-SimCity.... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/aavanhoff https://www.linkedin.com/in/aavanhoff [4] https://www.jauntvr.com/technology/ https://www.jauntvr.com/technology/ [5] https://www.jauntvr.com/careers/apply/?gh_jid=251962 https://www.jauntvr.com/careers/apply/?gh_jid=251962 LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS. The Role: This is a highly challenging and highly technical role offering the chance to define the early days of a new industry. Candidate would have to know or be willing to learn mobile 3D graphics programming (OpenGL/GLSL/Unity) with focus on interactivity, network optimization and performance tuning. Candidate should have strong leadership skills. While we are looking for prior experience as a good indicator of future success, our main criteria includes passion for VR, intelligence, creativity and strong work ethics.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I worked in Edinburgh and visited the Turing Institute a few times - I did meet Arthur a few times though I think we mainly spoke to some other chap (Danny?). When Arthur moved to work for Sun I remember begging a copy of Java from him early in '95.
  - david-given 10y ago
    Postscript isn't a complex language. It's probably quite straightforward to translate it into Javascript and run it locally on a web browser, rendering into a canvas. With a websocket connection to the backend, it'd be possible to recreate NeWS and use it for traditional client/server Unix apps, but with an ordinary web browser instead of an X server. I don't know whether this would be useful, mind, other than being a cool hack (which has value all of its own)... but it would be a very cool hack. Is any of the NeWS source code available?
    - DonHopkins 10y ago
      Omar Rizwan has been developing a project called "dewdrop" [1] [2] to re-implement NeWS in the web browser, using canvas to render the graphics. It's based on the WPS PostScript interpreter [3], which he's rewritten and extended in TypeScript. He says: "It's _very_ incomplete (not many events, multi-canvas support unclear, no GUI toolkit, no network stuff), but a surprising amount of the core stuff is in, I think (cooperative multitasking including timer events, OOP, graphics). Thinking about where to go from here -- could start the GUI toolkit, or server/client stuff..." A few years ago I started writing my own "SunDew" [4] [5] NeWS interpreter in JavaScript. It's not complete and doesn't have any graphics, but I've written some comments and stubbed out some classes that specify all the various NeWS data types and operators that would have to be supported. But now that I have seen how much cleaner Omar's code is written in TypeScript, and how it elegantly takes advantage of TypeScript's asynchronous programming to implement NeWS light weight processes, I think it would be better to build on top of what he's done instead. But my code and the comments in it could at least help serve as a spec for the various types of NeWS objects and operators that are required. There's still a lot of work to do, but it's certainly possible and would be really cool! There are some nuances that need to be worked out where NeWS doesn't quite match up with JavaScript or standard PostScript. Strings, arrays and dictionaries are references to shared object bodies, and arrays and strings of different lengths can share memory with sub-intervals. References to shared object bodies on the stack and in other objects contain their own permission bits independent of the object body, so you can have read-only access from one reference, and writable or executable access from another reference. And of course NeWS has magic dictionaries, which is a way of calling native code when you access dictionaries, which NeWS uses to implement fonts, canvases, processes, etc. [6] There are also a lot of undocumented nuances in NeWS that would have to be reverse engineered or figured out by looking at the original source code. [1] https://github.com/osnr/dewdrop https://github.com/osnr/dewdrop [2] http://dev.rsnous.com/dewdrop/executive/ http://dev.rsnous.com/dewdrop/executive/ [3] http://logand.com/sw/wps/ http://logand.com/sw/wps/ [4] http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/sundew.js http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/sundew.js [5] http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/test.html http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/test.html (open the JavaScrip console to see the logs) [6] http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97 http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97
DonHopkins 10y ago
Tony & Albas has moved to 3137 Stevens Creek Blvd. in West San Jose. https://www.yelp.com/biz/tony-and-albas-pizza-and-pasta-san-jose https://www.yelp.com/biz/tony-and-albas-pizza-and-pasta-san-... Also La Costeña, home of the World's Largest Burrito, is now at 235 E. Middlefield Rd. in Mountain View. http://costena.com/ http://costena.com/ And Cho's Mandarin Dim Sum has moved to 209 1st St. in Los Altos. (The rent for his hole-in-the-wall on California Ave. in Palo Alto was too high!) https://www.yelp.com/biz/chos-mandarin-dim-sum-los-altos https://www.yelp.com/biz/chos-mandarin-dim-sum-los-altos Please update your programs!

arethuza 10y ago

I actually worked on a project that used NeWS (actually HyperNeWS) as a front end for a Lisp based AI system written in Common Lisp. HyperNeWS could do some neat things - e.g. you could draw a shape (any shape!) in the graphical editor and paste it as the shape of a window, all without writing any code. Edit: changed "uses" to "used" - was quite a long time ago!

DonHopkins 10y ago
I really miss HyperNeWS [1], which I worked on with Arthur van Hoff at the Turing Institute, and I used it to port SimCity to NeWS on Unix [2]. Arthur van Hoff (who developed HyperNeWS and other stuff like Java [3]) and I are working together again, this time at his 360° VR video camera company, JauntVR [4]! I'm developing a secret project called HyperJaunt, that I can't say anything about yet, but you can guess by the name that I'm pretty excited about it! ;) We are looking for a lead software engineer with leadership experience in Amsterdam! [5] [1] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/ http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/ [2] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/HyperLook-SimCity.gif http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/HyperLook-SimCity.... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/aavanhoff https://www.linkedin.com/in/aavanhoff [4] https://www.jauntvr.com/technology/ https://www.jauntvr.com/technology/ [5] https://www.jauntvr.com/careers/apply/?gh_jid=251962 https://www.jauntvr.com/careers/apply/?gh_jid=251962 LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS. The Role: This is a highly challenging and highly technical role offering the chance to define the early days of a new industry. Candidate would have to know or be willing to learn mobile 3D graphics programming (OpenGL/GLSL/Unity) with focus on interactivity, network optimization and performance tuning. Candidate should have strong leadership skills. While we are looking for prior experience as a good indicator of future success, our main criteria includes passion for VR, intelligence, creativity and strong work ethics.
- arethuza 10y ago
  I worked in Edinburgh and visited the Turing Institute a few times - I did meet Arthur a few times though I think we mainly spoke to some other chap (Danny?). When Arthur moved to work for Sun I remember begging a copy of Java from him early in '95.
- david-given 10y ago
  Postscript isn't a complex language. It's probably quite straightforward to translate it into Javascript and run it locally on a web browser, rendering into a canvas. With a websocket connection to the backend, it'd be possible to recreate NeWS and use it for traditional client/server Unix apps, but with an ordinary web browser instead of an X server. I don't know whether this would be useful, mind, other than being a cool hack (which has value all of its own)... but it would be a very cool hack. Is any of the NeWS source code available?
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    Omar Rizwan has been developing a project called "dewdrop" [1] [2] to re-implement NeWS in the web browser, using canvas to render the graphics. It's based on the WPS PostScript interpreter [3], which he's rewritten and extended in TypeScript. He says: "It's _very_ incomplete (not many events, multi-canvas support unclear, no GUI toolkit, no network stuff), but a surprising amount of the core stuff is in, I think (cooperative multitasking including timer events, OOP, graphics). Thinking about where to go from here -- could start the GUI toolkit, or server/client stuff..." A few years ago I started writing my own "SunDew" [4] [5] NeWS interpreter in JavaScript. It's not complete and doesn't have any graphics, but I've written some comments and stubbed out some classes that specify all the various NeWS data types and operators that would have to be supported. But now that I have seen how much cleaner Omar's code is written in TypeScript, and how it elegantly takes advantage of TypeScript's asynchronous programming to implement NeWS light weight processes, I think it would be better to build on top of what he's done instead. But my code and the comments in it could at least help serve as a spec for the various types of NeWS objects and operators that are required. There's still a lot of work to do, but it's certainly possible and would be really cool! There are some nuances that need to be worked out where NeWS doesn't quite match up with JavaScript or standard PostScript. Strings, arrays and dictionaries are references to shared object bodies, and arrays and strings of different lengths can share memory with sub-intervals. References to shared object bodies on the stack and in other objects contain their own permission bits independent of the object body, so you can have read-only access from one reference, and writable or executable access from another reference. And of course NeWS has magic dictionaries, which is a way of calling native code when you access dictionaries, which NeWS uses to implement fonts, canvases, processes, etc. [6] There are also a lot of undocumented nuances in NeWS that would have to be reverse engineered or figured out by looking at the original source code. [1] https://github.com/osnr/dewdrop https://github.com/osnr/dewdrop [2] http://dev.rsnous.com/dewdrop/executive/ http://dev.rsnous.com/dewdrop/executive/ [3] http://logand.com/sw/wps/ http://logand.com/sw/wps/ [4] http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/sundew.js http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/sundew.js [5] http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/test.html http://donhopkins.com/home/sundew/test.html (open the JavaScrip console to see the logs) [6] http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97 http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97

DonHopkins 10y ago

Tony & Albas has moved to 3137 Stevens Creek Blvd. in West San Jose. https://www.yelp.com/biz/tony-and-albas-pizza-and-pasta-san-jose https://www.yelp.com/biz/tony-and-albas-pizza-and-pasta-san-... Also La Costeña, home of the World's Largest Burrito, is now at 235 E. Middlefield Rd. in Mountain View. http://costena.com/ http://costena.com/ And Cho's Mandarin Dim Sum has moved to 209 1st St. in Los Altos. (The rent for his hole-in-the-wall on California Ave. in Palo Alto was too high!) https://www.yelp.com/biz/chos-mandarin-dim-sum-los-altos https://www.yelp.com/biz/chos-mandarin-dim-sum-los-altos Please update your programs!