Message no. 1

From:	Luke Kendall <luke@********.CANON.OZ.AU>
Subject:	Not SR: Re: postscript
Date:	Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:36:31 +1100

> OK. I have question for you all. Just what is postscript and why
>do I need Goshscript and a ton of fonts to use it. Is postscript a Mac
>thing or something? Why is postscript so popular?
>
> * Darkstar

PostScript is a stack-based interpreted programming language, designed for
representing a printed page. This means that it is easy for programmers
to write code which will transform a desk top publishing system's page
representation into words and images on paper.

The down side is that to turn the PostScript into dots on the page, you
need a full interpreter for the language. Adobe (the inventors) make a
lot of money selling their interpreter to printer manufacturers, and as
you'd expect, the quality of the output is very high, and the interpreter
has very few bugs.

A good public domain interpreter is also available; it's called GhostScript.

The fonts, too, are PostScript programs, though some printers have some
built in.

Here's some example PostScript:

/box
{
0 0 moveto
100 0 lineto
100 100 lineto
0 100 lineto
closepath
} def


10 setlinewidth box stroke
0.5 setgray box fill

120 50 moveto
/Times-Roman findfont 12 scalefont setfont
0 setgray
(A gray box with a black border) show

showpage

luke