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PostScript is great for user interfaces! I've written lots and lots of user interfaces in PostScript. Just not Display PostScript. NeWS was a lot better for ma

PostScript is great for user interfaces! I've written lots and lots of user interfaces in PostScript. Just not Display PostScript. NeWS was a lot better for making interactive user interfaces than Display PostScript, and it came out a lot earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS The Story of Sun Microsystems PizzaTool (entirely written in PostScript): https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-... PizzaTool PostScript Source code: https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/pizzatool.txt I also worked on HyperLook, which was like HyperCard for NeWS with colorful PostScript instead of black and white pixels, plus networking: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-g... Discussion with Alan Kay about HyperLook and NeWS: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/alan-kay-on-should-web-browsers-have-stuck-to-being-document-viewers-and-a-discussion-of-news-5cb92c7b3445 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/alan-kay-on-should-web-browse... Then I used HyperLook to implemented the user interface for SimCity, programming the entire interactive user interface in NeWS PostScript -- Display PostScript couldn't do anything like that: https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transcript-17f627eab14a https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-simcity-demo-transcr... Several years before that, I worked on the NeWS version of Gosling Emacs at UniPress, with multiple tabbed windows and pie menus. (Gosling also wrote NeWS, and much later Java.): HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU The source code for UniPress Emacs 2.20 recently surfaced! (We called the NeWS version of Emacs "NeMACS" of course.): https://github.com/SimHacker/NeMACS https://github.com/SimHacker/NeMACS Here's the PostScript code of the NeWS Emacs display driver: https://github.com/SimHacker/NeMACS/blob/main/src/D.term/TrmPS.cps https://github.com/SimHacker/NeMACS/blob/main/src/D.term/Trm... And lots of other fun interactive PostScript user interface code we shipped with NeMACS: https://github.com/SimHacker/NeMACS/tree/main/ps https://github.com/SimHacker/NeMACS/tree/main/ps Pie menus: https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/win/pie.ps https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/win/pie.ps Tabbed windows: https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/win/tab.ps https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/win/tab.ps I used UniPress Emacs to develop an authoring tool for the NeWS version of HyperTIES, an early hypermedia browser, which we developed at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser: https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-to-facilitate-browsing-a-look-back-at-the-hyperties-workstation-browser-535eab3a3b3c https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-to-facilitate-browsi... HyperTIES Discussions from Hacker News: https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hacker-news-937d156f0330 https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hac... I also worked on the Gnu Emacs 18 NeWS driver for The NeWS Toolkit: https://donhopkins.com/home/code/emacs18/src/tnt.ps https://donhopkins.com/home/code/emacs18/src/tnt.ps A visual PostScript programming and debugging environment: The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication Routines — October 1989: https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-shape-of-psiber-space-october-1989-19e2dfa4d91e https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-shape-of-psiber-space-octo... PSIBER source code: https://www.donhopkins.com/home/pub/NeWS/litecyber/ https://www.donhopkins.com/home/pub/NeWS/litecyber/ NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS more coherently: 1) Used PostScript CODE instead of JavaScript for PROGRAMMING. 2) Used PostScript GRAPHICS instead of DHTML and CSS for RENDERING. 3) Used PostScript DATA instead of XML and JSON for DATA REPRESENTATION. More on that: SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (nee HyperNeWS (nee GoodNeWS)): https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4 https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-go... Here's a comparison of X-Windows and NeWS: https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398ebd47 https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398...

WillAdams 1y ago
Are there any available implementations of this? I've long wanted to experiment w/ HyperLook (or a successor to it).
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  You'll need a SparcStation emulator to run it, if not a real SparcStation. I've resisted the temptation because there's so much new code to write that I don't have much time to run old code. ;) Although it would be fun to run it in an emulator 1000 times faster than it ever ran on real hardware! Here are some links I've found: Unix & Linux: How to emulate the NeWS window system? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZhZqfC8sC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZhZqfC8sC4 Sun OpenWindows 3.0 (NeWS!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl08TvO0Bgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl08TvO0Bgw Looks like this is running on a real Sun workstation, not an emulator. He shows RasterRap and The NeWS Toolkit demos, but not PizzaTool. Good luck! Let me know if you get something working.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    Not quite willing to dig out my Sparcstation 5 and find the mouse and matching metal mousepad... Was more hopeful that someone had created a new implementation of that environment. Let's turn this around --- for vector-graphic oriented development work what current environment would you recommend trying?
Grosvenor 1y ago
People you should be paying careful attention to this. You could be living 40 years in the future. Instead, we're were we are and rapidly ossifying.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  I'd like to find a nicer development environment which made use of such options. Apple killed off HyperCard, Runtime Revolution became LiveCode which when opensource, then closed source and now is only available for monthly license fees. PythonCard never got to 1.0 and hasn't been updated in almost two decades... I'm currently doing all my development in: https://pythonscad.org/ https://pythonscad.org/ (Python-enabled version of OpenSCAD) but the only user-facing options are the Customizer which is quite limited, and a repository of files which users can access --- unfortunately, trying to bring up a canvas or UI window crashes the app.

WillAdams 1y ago

Are there any available implementations of this? I've long wanted to experiment w/ HyperLook (or a successor to it).

DonHopkins 1y ago
You'll need a SparcStation emulator to run it, if not a real SparcStation. I've resisted the temptation because there's so much new code to write that I don't have much time to run old code. ;) Although it would be fun to run it in an emulator 1000 times faster than it ever ran on real hardware! Here are some links I've found: Unix & Linux: How to emulate the NeWS window system? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZhZqfC8sC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZhZqfC8sC4 Sun OpenWindows 3.0 (NeWS!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl08TvO0Bgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl08TvO0Bgw Looks like this is running on a real Sun workstation, not an emulator. He shows RasterRap and The NeWS Toolkit demos, but not PizzaTool. Good luck! Let me know if you get something working.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  Not quite willing to dig out my Sparcstation 5 and find the mouse and matching metal mousepad... Was more hopeful that someone had created a new implementation of that environment. Let's turn this around --- for vector-graphic oriented development work what current environment would you recommend trying?

Grosvenor 1y ago

People you should be paying careful attention to this. You could be living 40 years in the future. Instead, we're were we are and rapidly ossifying.

WillAdams 1y ago
I'd like to find a nicer development environment which made use of such options. Apple killed off HyperCard, Runtime Revolution became LiveCode which when opensource, then closed source and now is only available for monthly license fees. PythonCard never got to 1.0 and hasn't been updated in almost two decades... I'm currently doing all my development in: https://pythonscad.org/ https://pythonscad.org/ (Python-enabled version of OpenSCAD) but the only user-facing options are the Customizer which is quite limited, and a repository of files which users can access --- unfortunately, trying to bring up a canvas or UI window crashes the app.