[geeks] Little Kids + Unix

[dave at cca.org]

jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu writes:

>On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 10:01:01PM -0500, dave at cca.org wrote:

>> I always thought it would be interesting to make the ghostscript graphics
>> library routines available to some form of lisp.

>What do you mean exactly?  There is a project, FPS.  The description of it is:
>     Imagine taking the primitives of PostScript and providing them in a more functional-language kind of way. That's what Olin Shivers' group has done.

>    FPS is a portable system for doing device-independent, resolution- independent graphics from Scheme programs. It is PostScript, with the Forth computational engine replaced with Scheme. At present, it runs on SCSH.

>Unfortunatly, it's home page appears to be dead.  But, does that sound like
>what you wanted?

Exactly.

Not for me, since I don't grok lisp. I always just though it would be a
good idea, theoretically.  Personally, I find that my postscript work
involves very minor data structure & program flow issues - so working
in plain old postscript is fine. I occasionally write postscript files 
with *no* program flow controls at all. I simply draw better with a 
numeric keypad than with a pen or mouse.

>You could also write a lisp system to spit out postscript.  I have a project
>where I plan to do this, as soon as I figure out what postscript to spit out.

Debugging programs like that can be amusing. I vaguely remember once doing
something that was three levels deep - program in language A emits program
in language B which emits program in language C... ARG. As long as you
debug methodically, everything's fine.

>I have a .ps file.  I have .eps files.  .eps files are supposed to be just
>regular old postscript, minus any absolute positioning.  Can I just do a 
>moveto in postscript to where I want the .eps, then cat the .eps in?  These
>are the questions I need to answer before I get to the lisp stuff.  BTW, the 
>short description of the app is that the .eps files are created by imagemagick
>from .jpgs, and now I need to print them onto forms.

I think EPS is more crippled than that.

Most applications generate *extremely* ugly postscript, which is *extremely*
manipulation-hostile (ie: embedding in another PS file).

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------
---------------------- "It's something to do." Cerebus --------------------