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PS-HTTPD -- The PostScript web server

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  PS-HTTPD -- The PostScript web server Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-10 01:29 +0000
    Re:PS-HTTPD -- The PostScript web server RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-11 10:18 +0000

#4773 — PS-HTTPD -- The PostScript web server

http://www.pugo.org/project/pshttpd/

   What is a web server? Most people would think about a web server as a
   program such as Apache, without really knowing what a web server really
   is. A web server is simply a program implementing the HTTP protocol.
   This protocol makes it possible for a web server (or any other kind of
   program) to request a file from the web server. The web server then
   tries to read this file and return the file data to the client. Pretty
   simple, right? Of course a real web server does more than this, but that
   is extensions to the very basic functionality described above.

   ...

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#4819

Rich <rich@example.invalid> Wrote in message:
> http://www.pugo.org/project/pshttpd/
> 
>    What is a web server? Most people would think about a web server as a
>    program such as Apache, without really knowing what a web server really
>    is. A web server is simply a program implementing the HTTP protocol.
>    This protocol makes it possible for a web server (or any other kind of
>    program) to request a file from the web server. The web server then
>    tries to read this file and return the file data to the client. Pretty
>    simple, right? Of course a real web server does more than this, but that
>    is extensions to the very basic functionality described above.
> 
>    ...
> 

This is a pretty neat article, but I found the interesting bit
 wasn't the paragraph above but rather the following:

//--clip

 PS-HTTPD is a web server written in PostScript. It all started
 as a coffee table discussion at my work. We first talked about
 web servers and how everything seems to get one. Divided from
 that we later on discussed the new monster Xerox printer we just
 got installed. I claimed that it probably has a web server. That
 made me wonder if it would be possible to make a simple web
 server in PostScript, the standard printer language from Adobe.
 After a bit too many hours of head scratching while reading
 PostScript references and coding it showed out that it was indeed
 possible - PS-HTTPD was born!

What can you then learn from making something stupid as this?
 First I learned a lot more about the HTTP protocol than I knew
 before. That knowledge has been very useful in the last ten
 years. I also learned much more about PostScript. I didn't really
 think that I ever would get use of that knowledge outside
 PS-HTTPD, but I was proven wrong. In my current work, at Opera
 Software, we needed a new printer driver for the UNIX versions of
 the Opera Browser. So about ten years after starting writing
 PS-HTTP I actually got use of my PostScript knowledge at work! It
 was very strange but really fun!
//--

Sorry I can't format the line length.  This Android NNTP app
 doesn't seem to do it.

My favorite part is the geek declaration?  Why do something like
 this?  Because you can, it's interesting, and in doing so you
 learn a lot.  The best projects are founded on the same
 principle.
-- 

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