Thinking in PostScript

by Glenn C. Reid

Book Overview

This hands-on guide shows readers how to "think" in PostScript, providing both new and experienced PostScript programmers with ideas and techniques to better manipulate and optimize PostScript... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201523728
• ISBN13: 9780201523720
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

This is a great book!

Thinking in PostScript covers very little graphics and page layout. This is not what this book is about. Thinking in PostScript offers you precisely what the title says: The ideas and intuition behind really *thinking* in PostScript. PostScript is a postfix language, quite like FORTH or RPL. While it is quite different from "traditional" Algol descendents, it is a sophisticated high-level language that offers higher order procedures, polymorphic data structures, run-time types, dynamic memory management, local state -- if you want it, and much more. The language is really quite similar to LISP or Scheme in its philosophy -- only that those are prefix languages. The distinction is superficial.I've written some small snippletts of code in PostScript before tackling the book. Then I read the book ... Within *hours* I was able to leverage my skills at LISP and Scheme and generate efficient yet readable, debuggable and maintainable code. I am now able to think directly in PostScript and produce really useful code. Mr Reid deserves much of the credit for this. If you need to write in PostScript and find yourself sinking in the language, writing unmaintainable, complicated mush, then this book is for you. It will help you *understand* the language and *think* in it, developing a good programming style as you go along. As for the info on font encodings, graphics, etc -- you can pick that up from the PostScript reference -- once you understand the language and feel comfortable with it.