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Re: Postscript in 4tH

From Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups comp.lang.forth
Subject Re: Postscript in 4tH
Date 2026-09-07 09:24 -0700
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <87wlsxjah1.fsf@nightsong.com> (permalink)
References <117hl2n$1ne4b$1@dont-email.me> <871pb7l36f.fsf@nightsong.com> <nnd$47db062e$781955bb@280ad1e4adf8c230>

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albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl writes:
> I experienced no "ridiculous snags". Actually the language is
> kind of nice and safer than Forth.

One thing that bit me was that "def" creates or modifies an essentially
global variable.  I had expected from the tutorial that I read that it
was more like a local, or a LET binding in Lisp terms.  So I had to
puzzle out that calling a function that set "x" to something, changed
the value in the caller.  The fix is to create a new dictionary and push
it on the stack.  This was a pain to figure out because of the
near-total absence of a debugging environment.  

Another annoying thing was that instead of "30 x !" you say "/x 30 def"
and that means, to save function args in variables, you have to use "/x
exch def" instead of "def".  But that was better documented so it mostly
only caused a bit of code clutter.

I wrote some Postscript a long time ago and it went ok at the time.  For
this more recent thing, I had forgotten everything about it and had to
start from scratch.

You are probably right that it gets more comfortable when you use it
more.  You're right that I didn't "fully embrace" it.  I basically
puzzled out the minimum amount to get my immediate thing done.

Of course PS is safer than Forth since it's garbage collected and
doesn't have raw pointers.  That has the corresponding performance and
memory cost but that's fine.  OTOH it still seems designed for fairly
low resource environments.  I think the original host for it was the
Apple LaserWriter with a 68000 cpu and around 1MB of memory but I guess
most of the memory was used for fonts and stuff.

I remember that the Adobe manuals were pretty good but I didn't use them
this time.  If I had to do something more serious in Postscript I'd
probably read through the Adobe manuals again first.

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Thread

Postscript in 4tH Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2026-09-05 19:55 +0200
  Re: Postscript in 4tH Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-09-05 15:54 -0700
    Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-06 11:08 +0200
      Re: Postscript in 4tH Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-09-07 09:24 -0700
        Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-07 23:47 +0200
      Re: Postscript in 4tH Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-08 02:09 -0300
        Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-08 20:34 +0000
          Re: Postscript in 4tH Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-08 22:38 -0300
            Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 03:05 +0000
              XML in Pythong (was: Re: Postscript in 4tH) Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> - 2026-09-09 15:00 +0800
              Re: Postscript in 4tH Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-10 01:06 -0300
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-10 07:38 +0000
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> - 2026-09-10 07:39 -0700
                Re: Postscript in 4tH antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2026-09-15 16:04 +0000
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-09-15 09:24 -0700
            Re: Postscript in 4tH Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> - 2026-09-09 15:15 +0800
              Re: Postscript in 4tH Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-10 01:11 -0300
            Re: Postscript in 4tH anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-09-09 07:35 +0000
              Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 08:10 +0000
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2026-09-10 17:58 +0200
              Re: Postscript in 4tH Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-10 01:44 -0300
            Re: Postscript in 4tH Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-09-09 03:01 -0700
            Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-09 14:05 +0200
          Re: Postscript in 4tH anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-09-09 06:42 +0000
            Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 08:28 +0000
              Re: Postscript in 4tH anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-09-09 10:03 +0000
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 22:17 +0000
              Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-09 14:42 +0200
                Re: Postscript in 4tH antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2026-09-09 19:17 +0000
                Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-10 12:22 +0200
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 21:54 +0000
                Re: Postscript in 4tH Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2026-09-09 22:14 -0700
                Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-10 12:30 +0200
            Re: Postscript in 4tH albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-09-09 14:36 +0200
    Re: Postscript in 4tH Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2026-09-06 14:27 +0200
      Re: Postscript in 4tH Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 17:18 +0200

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