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Re: Functional PostScript 1.0

To: scsh@martigny.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Functional PostScript 1.0
From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker)
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 20:42:54 GMT
Organization: nil
In article <32796049.4C0024FD@mit.edu>, Wandy Sae-Tan <wandy@mit.edu> wrote:

> The Scheme Underground is pleased to announce that Functional
> PostScript, release 1.0, is now available for Internet retrieval.
> 
> 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.
> 
> FPS is tightly based upon PostScript. It uses *exactly* the PostScript
> base rendering primitives. For example, it understands PostScript AFM
> files, and can render text using general PostScript fonts.

It's fairly trivial to _compile_ Scheme into Postscript, or at least
a pretty good subset of Scheme.  I understand from usenet gossip last
year that some compiler courses target Postscript as a 'machine language'.

Since Postscript level 2 has garbage collection, it should be quite reasonable
to move _most_ of the computation into the printer!

See

ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/ForthStack.html (also .ps.Z)

for one example of compilation of Lisp->Postscript.  This shows how to
do things like the Y combinator in Postscript!

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