4 ms·

How is PostScript a "worse Forth"? I find PostScript great fun to program in, and I think the type errors one gets from the system to indicate mistakes are a gr

by triska 7y ago

How is PostScript a "worse Forth"? I find PostScript great fun to program in, and I think the type errors one gets from the system to indicate mistakes are a great help when writing PostScript code.

kick 7y ago
It's much higher level, chooses the worst bits of high-level languages to throw in, NeWS's spin of it was object-oriented which has since been shown to be a mistake, it's not as extensible, has too many stacks, introduces significant complexity for dubious benefit, so forth. Of course, whether or not PostScript is like Forth at all is a matter of debate, some religiously disagree. I'm somewhere in the middle on that. Old flamewar topic: http://wiki.c2.com/?ForthPostscriptRelationship http://wiki.c2.com/?ForthPostscriptRelationship The syntax is also slightly less nice, which is relevant for their question, but less quantifiable.
- arethuza 7y ago
  I did a fair bit of PostScript development in NeWS/HyperNeWS and while I really liked PostScript I've never been able to get into Forth - I actually thought that PostScript was rather like the Common Lisp that the rest of the project used (one of the things I wrote for the project being the glue code in C to link the PostScript world of NeWS to Common Lisp - which is a nice mix of approaches to syntax!). NB: It was particularly neat that Sun shipped a set of Adobe blue/green/red(?) books with OpenWindows.
  - kick 7y ago
    PostScript does take a lot from Lisp, too. And (kind of) Smalltalk. 'DonHopkins has posted a lot about it on here; I really love hearing him talk about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3ADonHopkins%20postscript&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    - arethuza 7y ago
      I just found this article by Don about HyperNews and related stuff: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g...
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Object oriented programming has since been shown to be a mistake??! That's NeWS to me. Can you provide a citation please? What do you mean that NeWS or PostScript classes are not extensible? The little "e" in NeWS stands for "extensible". And what is the correct number of stacks, in your opinion? Please quantify what you can, and provide examples and links to code, and citations of other people who agree with your personal opinions like the number of stacks a language is supposed to have, the meaning of extensibility, or that object oriented programming languages are a mistake.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    > The little "e" in NeWS stands for "extensible". But maybe that capital N is for Non .. (kidding obviously) I've always been curious about NeWS but the web is quite short of demos about it (not helped by newspapers called Sun either). Do you know sites with videos about it ?
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      Thanks for asking! ;) I've put up some old demos on youtube, and made illustrated transcriptions of some, and written some papers and articles. Sorry the compression is so terrible on some of the videos. Here are some links: The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication Routines — October 1989 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-shape-of-psiber-space-october-1989-19e2dfa4d91e https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-shape-of-psiber-space-oct... PSIBER Space Deck and Pseudo Scientific Visualizer Demo. Demo of the PseudoScientific Visualizer and NeWS PSIBER Space Deck. Research performed under the direction of Mark Weiser and Ben Shneiderman. Developed and documented thanks to the support of John Gilmore and Julia Menapace. Developed and demonstrated by Don Hopkins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fqCeuue5Ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fqCeuue5Ac Pseudo Scientific Visualizer. Demo of the NeWS PseudoScientific Visualizer and the PSIBER Space Deck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GatM3s2S75Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GatM3s2S75Q Mousee Demo. Demo of Mousee running in the NeWS Window System. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP2QorRDUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP2QorRDUw Ben Shneiderman introduces Pie Menus developed by Don Hopkins at UMD Human Computer Interaction Lab. University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab Pie Menu Demos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkfqgAkgDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkfqgAkgDc Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser. By Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Rodrigo Botafogo, Don Hopkins, William Weiland. Published in Hypermedia, vol. 3, 2 (1991)101–117. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-browsing-a-look-back-at-the-hyperties-workstation-browser-535eab3a3b3c https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-brows... HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Browsing. Demo of NeWS based HyperTIES authoring tool, by Don Hopkins, at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4gUjaGAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4gUjaGAM HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS. Demo of UniPress Emacs based HyperTIES authoring tool, by Don Hopkins, at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. Tabbed window management with pie menus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU Just the Pie Menus from All the Widgets. Pie menu demo excerpts from "All The Widgets" CHI'90 Special Issue #57 ACM SIGGRAPH Video Review, produced by and narrated by Brad Meyers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOLS9I_tdKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOLS9I_tdKE Precision Pie Demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0scs59va4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0scs59va4c Handy Pie Menu Demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuA_yylYwjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuA_yylYwjM How To Choose with Pie Menus. Early pie menu demo by Don Hopkins, on NeWS 1.0, running on a Sun 3 workstation. Featuring the World's Most Enormous Pie Menu, and Direct PacManipulation! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJaY6Xu7ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJaY6Xu7ao NeWS Tab Window Demo. Demo of the Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4 SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS)). HyperLook was like HyperCard for NeWS, with PostScript graphics and scripting plus networking. Here are three unique and wacky examples that plug together to show what HyperNeWS was all about, and where we could go in the future! https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g... HyperLook SimCity Demo Transcript. This is a transcript of a video taped demonstration of SimCity on HyperLook in NeWS. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transcript-17f627eab14a https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transc... HyperLook Demo. Demonstration of SimCity running under the HyperLook user interface development system, based on NeWS PostScript, running on a SPARCstation 2. Includes a demonstration of editing HyperLook graphics and user interfaces, the HyperLook Cellular Automata Machine, and the HyperLook Happy Tool. Also shows The NeWS Toolkit applications PizzaTool and RasterRap. HyperLook developed by Arthur van Hoff and Don Hopkins at the Turing Institute. SimCity ported to Unix and HyperLook by Don Hopkins. HyperLook Cellular Automata Machine, Happy Tool, The NeWS Toolkit, PizzaTool and Raster Rap developed by Don Hopkins. Demonstration, transcript and close captioning by Don Hopkins. Camera and interview by Abbe Don. Taped at the San Francisco Exploratorium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avJnpDKHxPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avJnpDKHxPY The Story of Sun Microsystems PizzaTool. How I accidentally ordered my first pizza over the internet. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems... The X-Windows Disaster. This is Chapter 7 of the UNIX-HATERS Handbook. The X-Windows Disaster chapter was written by Don Hopkins. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398ebd47 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows-disaster-128d39...
dubya 7y ago
I remember that pre-1990, PostScript seemed like a miracle. "Computer Shopper" of all things, used to have a PostScript Guru column with all kinds of interesting stuff. All the computer I had access to was an Atari ST with GFA Basic, so really only the math and ideas translated, but it really was like seeing the future. Path-clipping in particular was mind-blowing. It's partly archived online, and weirder than I remember! https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml

by triska 7y ago

How is PostScript a "worse Forth"? I find PostScript great fun to program in, and I think the type errors one gets from the system to indicate mistakes are a great help when writing PostScript code.

kick 7y ago

It's much higher level, chooses the worst bits of high-level languages to throw in, NeWS's spin of it was object-oriented which has since been shown to be a mistake, it's not as extensible, has too many stacks, introduces significant complexity for dubious benefit, so forth. Of course, whether or not PostScript is like Forth at all is a matter of debate, some religiously disagree. I'm somewhere in the middle on that. Old flamewar topic: http://wiki.c2.com/?ForthPostscriptRelationship http://wiki.c2.com/?ForthPostscriptRelationship The syntax is also slightly less nice, which is relevant for their question, but less quantifiable.

arethuza 7y ago
I did a fair bit of PostScript development in NeWS/HyperNeWS and while I really liked PostScript I've never been able to get into Forth - I actually thought that PostScript was rather like the Common Lisp that the rest of the project used (one of the things I wrote for the project being the glue code in C to link the PostScript world of NeWS to Common Lisp - which is a nice mix of approaches to syntax!). NB: It was particularly neat that Sun shipped a set of Adobe blue/green/red(?) books with OpenWindows.
- kick 7y ago
  PostScript does take a lot from Lisp, too. And (kind of) Smalltalk. 'DonHopkins has posted a lot about it on here; I really love hearing him talk about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3ADonHopkins%20postscript&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I just found this article by Don about HyperNews and related stuff: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g...
DonHopkins 7y ago
Object oriented programming has since been shown to be a mistake??! That's NeWS to me. Can you provide a citation please? What do you mean that NeWS or PostScript classes are not extensible? The little "e" in NeWS stands for "extensible". And what is the correct number of stacks, in your opinion? Please quantify what you can, and provide examples and links to code, and citations of other people who agree with your personal opinions like the number of stacks a language is supposed to have, the meaning of extensibility, or that object oriented programming languages are a mistake.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  > The little "e" in NeWS stands for "extensible". But maybe that capital N is for Non .. (kidding obviously) I've always been curious about NeWS but the web is quite short of demos about it (not helped by newspapers called Sun either). Do you know sites with videos about it ?
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Thanks for asking! ;) I've put up some old demos on youtube, and made illustrated transcriptions of some, and written some papers and articles. Sorry the compression is so terrible on some of the videos. Here are some links: The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication Routines — October 1989 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-shape-of-psiber-space-october-1989-19e2dfa4d91e https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-shape-of-psiber-space-oct... PSIBER Space Deck and Pseudo Scientific Visualizer Demo. Demo of the PseudoScientific Visualizer and NeWS PSIBER Space Deck. Research performed under the direction of Mark Weiser and Ben Shneiderman. Developed and documented thanks to the support of John Gilmore and Julia Menapace. Developed and demonstrated by Don Hopkins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fqCeuue5Ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fqCeuue5Ac Pseudo Scientific Visualizer. Demo of the NeWS PseudoScientific Visualizer and the PSIBER Space Deck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GatM3s2S75Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GatM3s2S75Q Mousee Demo. Demo of Mousee running in the NeWS Window System. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP2QorRDUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP2QorRDUw Ben Shneiderman introduces Pie Menus developed by Don Hopkins at UMD Human Computer Interaction Lab. University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab Pie Menu Demos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkfqgAkgDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkfqgAkgDc Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser. By Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Rodrigo Botafogo, Don Hopkins, William Weiland. Published in Hypermedia, vol. 3, 2 (1991)101–117. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-browsing-a-look-back-at-the-hyperties-workstation-browser-535eab3a3b3c https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-brows... HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Browsing. Demo of NeWS based HyperTIES authoring tool, by Don Hopkins, at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4gUjaGAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4gUjaGAM HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS. Demo of UniPress Emacs based HyperTIES authoring tool, by Don Hopkins, at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. Tabbed window management with pie menus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU Just the Pie Menus from All the Widgets. Pie menu demo excerpts from "All The Widgets" CHI'90 Special Issue #57 ACM SIGGRAPH Video Review, produced by and narrated by Brad Meyers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOLS9I_tdKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOLS9I_tdKE Precision Pie Demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0scs59va4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0scs59va4c Handy Pie Menu Demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuA_yylYwjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuA_yylYwjM How To Choose with Pie Menus. Early pie menu demo by Don Hopkins, on NeWS 1.0, running on a Sun 3 workstation. Featuring the World's Most Enormous Pie Menu, and Direct PacManipulation! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJaY6Xu7ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJaY6Xu7ao NeWS Tab Window Demo. Demo of the Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4 SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS)). HyperLook was like HyperCard for NeWS, with PostScript graphics and scripting plus networking. Here are three unique and wacky examples that plug together to show what HyperNeWS was all about, and where we could go in the future! https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g... HyperLook SimCity Demo Transcript. This is a transcript of a video taped demonstration of SimCity on HyperLook in NeWS. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transcript-17f627eab14a https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transc... HyperLook Demo. Demonstration of SimCity running under the HyperLook user interface development system, based on NeWS PostScript, running on a SPARCstation 2. Includes a demonstration of editing HyperLook graphics and user interfaces, the HyperLook Cellular Automata Machine, and the HyperLook Happy Tool. Also shows The NeWS Toolkit applications PizzaTool and RasterRap. HyperLook developed by Arthur van Hoff and Don Hopkins at the Turing Institute. SimCity ported to Unix and HyperLook by Don Hopkins. HyperLook Cellular Automata Machine, Happy Tool, The NeWS Toolkit, PizzaTool and Raster Rap developed by Don Hopkins. Demonstration, transcript and close captioning by Don Hopkins. Camera and interview by Abbe Don. Taped at the San Francisco Exploratorium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avJnpDKHxPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avJnpDKHxPY The Story of Sun Microsystems PizzaTool. How I accidentally ordered my first pizza over the internet. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems... The X-Windows Disaster. This is Chapter 7 of the UNIX-HATERS Handbook. The X-Windows Disaster chapter was written by Don Hopkins. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398ebd47 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows-disaster-128d39...

dubya 7y ago

I remember that pre-1990, PostScript seemed like a miracle. "Computer Shopper" of all things, used to have a PostScript Guru column with all kinds of interesting stuff. All the computer I had access to was an Atari ST with GFA Basic, so really only the math and ideas translated, but it really was like seeing the future. Path-clipping in particular was mind-blowing. It's partly archived online, and weirder than I remember! https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml