Comment by DonHopkins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DonHopkins | Hacker News Reader

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>This new printer was based on a small, stack-based Turing-complete language called Forth, and they named it… the Interpress!

Xerox's laser printers were never "based on Forth". JAM and Interpress were only conceptually related to Forth, in that they used postfix semantics.

That's like saying that because Java byte code uses a stack, your Android phone is based on Forth. It's not. Stack based architectures (like the Burroughs B5500 and B6500, developed in 1962, which directly inspired Design System => JAM => Interpress => PostScript) have been around a lot longer than Forth (developed in 1970), and simply using a stack doesn't make a language Forth.

Here's a much more accurate and detailed historical account of the history of Interpress, written by Brian Reid:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fa.laser-lovers/H3us...

Gaffney came to E&S from graduate school at the University of Illinois, where he had used the Burroughs B5500 and B6500 computers. Their stack-oriented architectures made a big impression on him. He combined the execution semantics of the Burroughs machines with the evolving Evans and Sutherland imaging models, to produce the Design System. Like all successful software systems, the Design System slowly evolved as it was used, and many people contributed to that evolution.

John Warnock joined Xerox PARC in 1978 to work for Chuck Geschke. There he teamed up with Martin Newell in producing an interpreted graphics system called JAM. "JAM" stands for "John And Martin". JAM had the same postfix execution semantics as Gaffney's Design System, and was based on the Evans and Sutherland imaging model, but augmented the E&S imaging model by providing a much more extensive set of graphics primitives. Like the later versions of the Design System, JAM was "token based" rather than "command line based", which means that the JAM interpreter reads a stream of input tokens and processes each token completely before moving to the next. Newell and Warnock implemented JAM on various Xerox workstations; by 1981 JAM was available at Stanford on the Xerox Alto computers, where I first saw it.

Thank you for the correction. I revised the phrasing slightly.

Jerry Mendelson's Laser Lovers post [0] reads "A FORTH like graphics/printing language was developed by, among others, John Warnock before coming to Xerox/PARC." Mendelson quoting Forth as the first inspiration here made me believe they knew of and used it. But admittedly "based on" is a bit much.

[0] https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1985/0301.html

Thanks for writing and updating such a great well researched article!

Funnily enough, the first sentence of the Wikipedia page about Interpress literally says: "Interpress is a page description language developed at Xerox PARC, based on the Forth programming language [1] and an earlier graphics language called JaM."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpress

The [1] reference is to: Harrington, Steven; Buckley, Robert R. (1988). Interpress, the Source Book. Brady Book. p. 18. ISBN 0-13-475591-X.

Unfortunately, I can't find a copy of it online (wouldn't it be deliciously ironic to find a PDF rendering of the Interpress Source Book? ;), so I can't check if the citation literally says Interpress was based on Forth, but I've asked Brian Reid if he had a copy or knew a better citation. I'll update the Wikipedia page if I get any more information.

I really love Brian's first-hand account of the origins of PostScript that he posted to laser-lovers!

If the Helvetica font can have a movie all about it, I think the story of PostScript deserves a whole miniseries! "showpage: the PostScript Documentary"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkoX0pEwSCw

Brian Reid is also known for Scribe, the Usenet Cookbook, and is well respected enough in computer security circles that Kevin Mitnick impersonated him on the phone to gain people's trust! ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist...

Brian's brother Glenn Reid was also very active in the PostScript world, he worked for Adobe (Illustrator), Apple (iMovie) and Fractal Design (Painter, Dabbler, Poser), and NeXT (Interpersonal Computing).

Around 1990, Glenn Reid independently designed and developed a delightfully original "Font Appreciation" app for NeXT called TouchType, which decades later only recently somehow found its way into Illustrator. Adobe even CALLED it the "Touch Type Tool", but didn't give him any credit or royalty. The only difference in Adobe's version of TouchType is that there's a space between "Touch" and "Type" (which TouchType made really easy to do), and that it came decades later!

Illustrator tutorial: Using the Touch Type tool | lynda.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUkE3XLw_EA

SUMMARY OF BaNG MEETING #4, July 18, 1990: https://ftp.nice.ch/peanuts/GeneralData/Usenet/news/1990/_CS...

TOUCHTYPE Glenn Reid, Independent NeXT Developer

The next talk was given by Glenn Reid, who previously worked at both NeXT and Adobe. He demonstrated the use of his TouchType application, which should prove to be an enormous boon to people with serious typesetting needs.

TouchType is unlike any other text-manipulation program to date. It takes the traditional "draw program" metaphor used by programs like TopDraw and Adobe Illustrator and extends it to encompass selective editing of individual characters of a text object. To TouchType, text objects are not grouped as sequences of characters, but as individually movable letters. For instance, the "a" in "BaNG" can be moved independently of the rest of the word, yet TouchType still remembers that the "a" is associated with the other three letters.

Perhaps the best feature of this program is the ability to do very accurate and precise kerning (the ability to place characters closer together to create a more natural effect). TouchType supports intelligent automatic kerning and very intuitive, manual kerning done with a horizontal slider or by direct character manipulation. It also incorporates useful features such as sliders to change font sizes, character leading, and character widths, and an option which returns characters to a single base line.

TouchType, only six weeks in development, should be available in early August, with a tentative price of $249. BaNG members were given the opportunity to purchase the software for $150.

This is why I come to HN

This is why I usually check out the 2-3 top comments and then read the article.

Same here! I thought I was the only one with this strange habit.

The knowledge base present here means misinformation can be called out quickly and impactfully.

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