Hacker News Reader

Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

I came to Forth-like languages via PostScript, which has the advantage of a huge built-in graphics library. It very naturally introduces concepts like higher order operations, code as data and data as code.

View on HN

I really lament that PDF and the victory of Motif meant the end of PostScript for most purposes. Sadly I was a bit too young for NeWS, and there seems no emulation available anywhere. Ghostscript itself isn't exactly tooled for actual programming...

Back in the 90s the most popular train route web site in Germany used to send you a PS file for printing on Linux (they did something more native for Windows). And that was basically a serious of quite easy to understand line drawing and text positioning instructions.

And I think it was jwz who had some cassette cover sheets where you put in the song and artist data by editing the PostScript file itself.

Can you reccomend any books on PS?

Not the OP, but "Thinking in Postscript" is often recommended and available freely.

http://w3-o.cs.hm.edu/~ruckert/compiler/ThinkingInPostScript...

reference manual: https://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf

tutorial and cookbook (blue book): https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/BLUEBOOK.PDF

language program design (green book): https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/GREENBK.PDF

Depends. How do you feel about math?

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/manual/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com