[DonHopkins]

The printer's jammed, give them some time.

Meanwhile, more about PostScript:

John Warnock's "linguistic motherboard" and Owen Densmore's "class.ps" smalltalk-like object oriented PostScript programming system, which NeWS and The NeWS toolkit used.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29295116

Owen Densmore's work with Bill Atkinson and John Warnock on the Mac printing system, and his "linguistic motherboard" email and "Swiss Army NeWS: A Programmable Network Facility" white paper:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33827923

More history of PostScript, JAM, InterPress, and John Warnock's vision of PostScript as a "Linguistic Motherboard":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37201231

[macintux]

My boss, many years ago, talked about the time he programmed a printer to act as a web server using Postscript. I never asked what happened to other print requests while it was running.

[somat]

There is an apocryphal story about some poor sys-admin who after spending several days trying to diagnose mysteries hangs in the new office laser printer. traced it to one user who was sending long print jobs that printed nothing. This enterprising engineer had to be told to knock it off after explaining how the new laser printer had the most powerful computer in the office and as such had rewritten some of his simulation code in postscript to run on the printer.

[jeffrallen]

They were routed to the integrated time machine in PS, and sent to the year 2026 when they would be rendered in mobile phones, then the bitmaps would be sent back in time to your boss's printer.

[ale42]

They were silently sent to the client browsers... ;-)

[kenshi]

Thanks for posting this!

I've started looking into the history of Postscript because I was looking into the idea of "sending a program not a data structure".

Some thoughts so far: https://krishna.github.io/posts/send-a-program-not-a-datastr...

[horacemorace]

Check out Don Lancaster’s tinaja archive, if it’s still around. He was quite enamored with NeXT style universal postscript and wrote at length about it.

[DonHopkins]

Don Lancaster passed away in 2023 at 83.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lancaster

Don Lancaster has died (gilaherald.com)

https://gilaherald.com/obituary-for-don-lancaster/

HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36545595

Woody Baker was one of his biggest fans on comp.lang.postscript!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36546584

DonHopkins on July 1, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: Don Lancaster has died

I have always been a huge fan of Don Lancaster's wizardly writing about PostScript, who not only regularly published in Computer Shopper, but also generously ran a free PostScript help line at his own personal phone number. But Woody Baker was by far his biggest most enthusiastic fan of all (and highly eccentric in personality and coding style), and he would regularly extol and evangelize Don Lancaster's virtues and ideas on comp.lang.postscript. Once around March 4 1990, I gave Woody Baker some feedback on his comp.lang.postscript faq, including the suggesting that he might consider leaving Don Lancaster's personal phone number out of it, but he replied:

>Again, I want to thank you for your contributions. You and D. Cortesi have been most helpful. The two of you gave me very in depth feedback. I have moved almost all the editorializing to the end. I have moved the style stuff to the end. As for DON LANCASTER, I left his phone number in. Don publishes it regularly in the computer shopper, as a free PostScript help line. He is self-employed, and a widely published Author, for TAB books among other things. He says he averages 80 helpline calls a day. He also sells programs and books that he is self publishing. I can assure you, he won't mind at all.

Woody loved to talk in depth about how amazing and inspirational Don Lancaster was, and defend his well deserved honor and reputation whenever anybody criticized his work.

http://computer-programming-forum.com/36-postscript/ff79f7dd... [broken link, not on archive org]

>True. Don lives in an APPLE II world. You are wrong, however in certain statements. He has (unfortunatly) mentioned what FLXPROC does. It happens to be critical to certain things, that several consultants are working on here and there. He knows enough not to blab some things, and jerk work out from under individuals (at least some of the time). Don has dug pretty deeply into certain areas of PS, and I have dug deeply into other areas of PS. Don is first and formost a writer. He's self employed, and extremely intellegent. I am first and formost a software engineer, and secondly a writer. I tend to write, however for clients. I'm confident that I know what FLXPROC does, and what it is good for. And I'm sure Don does also. I more or less told him about FLXPROC and he more or less told me what it does. After first quarter 1990, some things will be essentially worthless as consulting info, and will rapidly become public knowlege. I don't applogize for keeping the lid on some things. I'm a bit of a mercenary in a way. I like consulting.

>Cheers

>Woody

Their great respect was mutual:

https://archive.org/stream/Ask_the_Guru_v1

https://archive.org/stream/Ask_the_Guru_v1/Ask_the_Guru_v1_d...

>Don Lancaster's ASK THE GURU Selected reprints

>Copyright c. 1987 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics, Box 809, Thatcher, AZ 85552. [phone]

>Electronically self-published using the Apple //e computer and the LaserWriter Plus. All graphics were done in their entirety by ProDOS Applewriter 2.1.

[...]

>I don't think I was ever more amazed when Woody Baker of The Copier Store mailed me back one of my very own laser printed business cards — redone in real ink in an almost "embossed" gold! Turns out Woody had found an older Omnicrom machine scunging around unsold in the back of his warehouse and fired it up. Lo and behold, the instant conversion of any toner image to real ink in stunning colors!

Example 10 of Don Lancaster's Postscript Show & Tell beautifully illustrates how an Omnicrom printer works:

https://www.tinaja.com/glib/psnt.pdf

>Example ten -- What appears hear as a mild-mannered Postscript technical illustration is really the secret of full color laser printing.

>Omnicrom sheets are real ink applied to a carrier. You place the sheet in contact with your toner image and then run it back through the fusion rollers a second time. The ink gets fused over the toner.