Re: [xml-dev] RE: Declarative programming requires a different mindset

[David <dlee@calldei.com>]

When I got my first Postcript printer in my office where I worked at a 
university in the 80's I was so excited.
I treated it as a second computer.  Since the only useful output had to 
be printed (you could get some error diagnostics on the serial port ...)
I used to to experiment with fractal algorithms producing all sorts of 
nifty printable output  based on recursive functions.  Sometimes it 
would run for 30 minutes or more for one page.  I was so happy at the 
time that I was able to offload all this computation to the printer.
But not many people do this, you are right they use it to format one-off 
prints just like HTML.

-------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org


On 4/12/2010 7:56 AM, Michael Sokolov wrote:
> Yes, but I think you missed my point, which is not that PS is like HTML, as
> a language, which as you demonstrate, it is not. Rather I was trying to say
> that the purposes to which it is put are (usually) the same kinds of
> purposes to which HTML is put: ie laying out text and graphics.  The uses of
> PostScript (in spite of its rich, complex, procedural nature) are almost all
> static, declarative, and single-purpose.  And this seems odd.  Just pointing
> out a curious phenomenon in the linguistic bestiary.  But it seems nobody
> else finds it remarkable, so enough about that.
>
>