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Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript

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On 04 Oct 2016, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

> On Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 10:10:43 PM UTC+13, Mark Carroll wrote:
(snip)
>> ... then my documents adjust perfectly to the exact font metrics.
>> It is lovely to be able to do that kind of thing.
>
> Microsoft Word user, are you?
>
> It’s the kind of thing most of us take for granted.

I'm sorry, you've completely lost me here. I certainly wouldn't
associate Word use with caring at all about the fine details of how
documents look. I'm not talking about simple generic things like
Knuthian paragraph breaking or placement of floating figures, but
instead bespoke things like the internals of custom figures like
histogram binning or scatterplot tickmarks or GANTT charts that adapt
both their layout and spacing internally according to font sizes, page
widths, etc., while using the same fonts as whatever the main document
text currently is (for task names, coordinates, whatever). Then I don't
have to regenerate different kinds of diagrams and charts using myriad
source software whenever I want to adjust formatting, it all just
self-adapts.

It's often not much that I want to adjust formatting as now we want to
partially reuse something for someone who demands different specific
formatting. I am a big fan of tools like Basser Lout and TikZ but they
go only so far and quite often when I've thought about what I actually
want to express it turns out that PostScript itself is a very natural
fit and gives me pretty much the language to express what I had in mind.
(Unfortunately it was some years before I discovered that because the
only PostScript I'd seen was generated by printer drivers.)

I'll agree it's not perfect: for instance, when I wanted letters
nestling perfectly against each other I ended up having to write a sort
(for line segments) to find the coordinates of specific parts of the
letters. But, things like fonts are enough of a pain (different types of
font, different operating systems like them differently installed, etc.)
that I find it helpful to be able to author stuff that still looks good
if the exact fonts of interest aren't present on both the system I'm
writing on and the eventual destination (whether it be printer or not),
but you may be lucky enough to be able to rely on a fair bit of
normality and homogeneity or simply be better at installing various
fonts on various systems than I am.

-- Mark

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A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Dylan McNamee <dylan.mcnamee@gmail.com> - 2016-09-13 15:29 -0700
  Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript jdaw1 <jdawiseman@gmail.com> - 2016-09-13 15:54 -0700
  Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-09-14 03:11 -0700
    Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Dylan McNamee <dylan.mcnamee@gmail.com> - 2016-09-14 07:54 -0700
      Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-09-14 13:55 -0700
        Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript jdaw1 <jdawiseman@gmail.com> - 2016-09-15 01:06 -0700
          Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-09-15 14:46 -0700
            Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript jdaw1 <jdawiseman@gmail.com> - 2016-10-01 16:04 -0700
              Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net> - 2016-10-01 23:10 -0400
        Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2016-09-20 22:24 +0000
          Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Martin Leese <please@see.Web.for.e-mail.INVALID> - 2016-09-21 13:36 -0600
            Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-09-21 16:27 -0700
  Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Alan <alan.isaac@gmail.com> - 2016-09-22 18:57 -0700
    Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-09-22 20:04 -0700
      Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2016-10-01 13:45 -0700
        Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-03 04:29 -0700
          Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2016-10-03 10:41 -0700
            Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-03 14:49 -0700
              Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2016-10-03 21:52 -0700
    Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Markus Triska <triska@metalevel.at> - 2016-10-01 22:16 +0200
      Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2016-10-01 13:30 -0700
      Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-02 16:07 -0700
        Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Markus Triska <triska@metalevel.at> - 2016-10-03 02:03 +0200
          Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-02 19:47 -0700
          Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-04 02:00 -0700
            Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2016-10-04 10:10 +0100
              Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Dylan McNamee <dylan.mcnamee@gmail.com> - 2016-10-04 08:00 -0700
              Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-04 13:57 -0700
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2016-10-05 09:31 +0100
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-05 06:37 -0700
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript ken <ken@spamcop.net> - 2016-10-05 16:10 +0100
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript jdaw1 <jdawiseman@gmail.com> - 2016-10-05 13:37 -0700
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-05 18:13 -0700
            Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Markus Triska <triska@metalevel.at> - 2016-10-05 22:44 +0200
              Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-05 18:12 -0700
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Markus Triska <triska@metalevel.at> - 2016-10-08 10:24 +0200
                Re: A one-page Caesar's Cipher kit, in raw PostScript Lawrence D’Oliveiro <lawrencedo99@gmail.com> - 2016-10-08 11:21 -0700

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