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PostScript, which was once widely used in academia. Not outside. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a .ps file that wasn’t hosted on a .edu domain (or oth

PostScript, which was once widely used in academia. Not outside. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a .ps file that wasn’t hosted on a .edu domain (or other countries’ equivalents.)

bitwize 7y ago
That's kind of like saying MIDI was never widely used because you only ever saw MIDI files used to play tinny soundcard music on someone's GeoShitties site back in the day. MIDI is much more a control protocol than a file format, and it was and is used as such throughout professional music production. Similarly, PostScript was the control language for high-end printers back in the day, so it was used extensively as the final output format for print, even if it was rarely saved off as a .ps file.
AdieuToLogic 7y ago
>> PostScript, which was once widely used > in academia. Not outside. NeXTSTEP utilized "Display PostScript"[0] for both printing and display. Apple's Cocoa can trace direct ancestry to frameworks originating in NeXTSTEP[1]. I am pretty sure this included use of PostScript in the display/printing frameworks as well, but do not have references to support that memory. So, while '.ps' files are not often seen in the wild, as you say, a strong case can be made that PostScript was once (if not currently) widely used. 0 - https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-cocoa-with/0596003013/ch01.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-cocoa-with/059... 1 - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-legacy-of-next-lives-on-in-os-x/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-legacy-of-next-l...
- WalterGR 7y ago
  NeXTSTEP I would argue that’s not widely used. Apple's Cocoa can trace direct ancestry to frameworks originating in NeXTSTEP Not sure ancestry counts. printing Ah, fair point, thanks. I had forgotten about that. My original claim is incorrect.
yellowapple 7y ago
A substantial minority (if not majority) of standard (i.e. not special-purpose) printers speak PostScript, and PDFs are a subset of it. Not sure how much more "widely used" you expect it to be :)
emptybits 7y ago
Hosting public PS files may be an academic thing. But commercial use wasn't rare. I did PostScript programming for Xerox Research briefly in the late 1980s. I needed to do batches of mathematical and optical analysis of novel materials synthesized in their labs. This demanded conditional logic, statistical analysis, layout, rasterizing, and archival of results. A single PostScript file did all of the above, with handwritten and template-generated code that ran on the output device, typically a printer. Weird choice of language, maybe; I was a lone computing nerd in a lab of mad chemists. But for rapid prototyping and always having presentable results as the analysis evolved, PostScript ended up being really easy to use. Looking back 30 years now, I think it was also impressive that it was device independent, readable and commented code, with numeric data embedded like a heredoc. I haven't seen those docs or PostScript code for decades but it wouldn't surprise me if they ran on a PostScript device or viewer today. Anyways, commercial use of PostScript happened, if mostly internally. At that workplace it was a known and reasonable document format to distribute.

PostScript, which was once widely used in academia. Not outside. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a .ps file that wasn’t hosted on a .edu domain (or other countries’ equivalents.)

bitwize 7y ago

That's kind of like saying MIDI was never widely used because you only ever saw MIDI files used to play tinny soundcard music on someone's GeoShitties site back in the day. MIDI is much more a control protocol than a file format, and it was and is used as such throughout professional music production. Similarly, PostScript was the control language for high-end printers back in the day, so it was used extensively as the final output format for print, even if it was rarely saved off as a .ps file.

AdieuToLogic 7y ago

>> PostScript, which was once widely used > in academia. Not outside. NeXTSTEP utilized "Display PostScript"[0] for both printing and display. Apple's Cocoa can trace direct ancestry to frameworks originating in NeXTSTEP[1]. I am pretty sure this included use of PostScript in the display/printing frameworks as well, but do not have references to support that memory. So, while '.ps' files are not often seen in the wild, as you say, a strong case can be made that PostScript was once (if not currently) widely used. 0 - https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-cocoa-with/0596003013/ch01.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-cocoa-with/059... 1 - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-legacy-of-next-lives-on-in-os-x/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/the-legacy-of-next-l...

WalterGR 7y ago
NeXTSTEP I would argue that’s not widely used. Apple's Cocoa can trace direct ancestry to frameworks originating in NeXTSTEP Not sure ancestry counts. printing Ah, fair point, thanks. I had forgotten about that. My original claim is incorrect.

yellowapple 7y ago

A substantial minority (if not majority) of standard (i.e. not special-purpose) printers speak PostScript, and PDFs are a subset of it. Not sure how much more "widely used" you expect it to be :)

emptybits 7y ago

Hosting public PS files may be an academic thing. But commercial use wasn't rare. I did PostScript programming for Xerox Research briefly in the late 1980s. I needed to do batches of mathematical and optical analysis of novel materials synthesized in their labs. This demanded conditional logic, statistical analysis, layout, rasterizing, and archival of results. A single PostScript file did all of the above, with handwritten and template-generated code that ran on the output device, typically a printer. Weird choice of language, maybe; I was a lone computing nerd in a lab of mad chemists. But for rapid prototyping and always having presentable results as the analysis evolved, PostScript ended up being really easy to use. Looking back 30 years now, I think it was also impressive that it was device independent, readable and commented code, with numeric data embedded like a heredoc. I haven't seen those docs or PostScript code for decades but it wouldn't surprise me if they ran on a PostScript device or viewer today. Anyways, commercial use of PostScript happened, if mostly internally. At that workplace it was a known and reasonable document format to distribute.