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Comment by mati365 | Hacker News Reader

So it's possible to port C compiler to PDF. Compiler is already done https://github.com/Mati365/ts-c-compiler. We can run DOS in PDF basically..

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That's how it inevitably goes with Turing completeness :)

The real achievement here arguably isn't running code (that's provided by the PDF spec and implementations), but managing to hook it up to user input/output in an ergonomic-enough way to play Tetris.

The mention of Turing Completeness got me curious, so I looked something up. Behold, a C compiler written in Lambda Calculus: https://github.com/woodrush/lambda-8cc

Amazing, thank you!

The PDF [1] containing the Lambda calculus term manages to hang/glitch/crash both Firefox's and macOS Preview's PDF renderer, which in itself is quite the achievement in portability.

Update: Nevermind, Firefox handles it perfectly, it just (probably wisely) disables seamless scrolling and I have to use the "next/previous" page buttons manually. macOS got there after a minute or two of loading with no UI indications.

[1] https://woodrush.github.io/lambda-8cc.pdf

Adobe Acrobat DOOM Pro™

What about running Adobe Acrobat in Adobe Acrobat?

Can we run Windows 3.1 in protected mode from a PDF?

Imho, it's possible. Generally speaking, it depends if PDF can render any sort of canvas.

Can we compile qemu to a PDF?

It's PDFs all the way down.

But will it also compile when printed out on paper?

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