Comment by DonHopkins

3 years ago

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

Alan Kay on “Should web browsers have stuck to being document viewers?” and a discussion of Smalltalk, NeWS and HyperCard:

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/alan-kay-on-should-web-browse...

>Owen Densmore recounted John Warnock’s idea that PostScript was actually a “linguistic motherboard”. (This was part of a discussion with Owen about NeFS, which was a proposal for the next version of NFS to run a PostScript interpreter in the kernel. More about that here:)

https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/linguistic-motherbo...

>Window System? ..NeWS ain’ no stinkin’ Window System! -or- Swiss Army NeWS: A Programmable Network Facility, by Owen Densmore, Sun Microsystems, NeWS Team

>Introduction

>NeWS is difficult to understand simply because it is not just a window system. It is a “Swiss Army Knife” containing several components, some of which contribute to its use as a window system, others which provide the networking facilities for implementing the client-server model, all embedded in a programmable substrate allowing extremely flexible and creative combination of these elements.

>During the initial implementation phase of the Macintosh LaserWriter software, I temporarily transfered from Apple to Adobe working closely with John Warnock and other Adobe engineers. At lunch one day, I asked: “John, what do you plan to do after LaserWriter?” His answer was interesting:

>PostScript is a linguistic “mother board”, which has “slots” for several “cards”. The first card we (Adobe) built was a graphics card. We’re considering other cards. In particular, we’ve thought about other network services, such as a file server card.

>He went on to say how a programmable network was really his goal, and that the printing work was just the first component. His mentioning using PostScript for a file server is particularly interesting: Sun’s next version of NFS is going to use PostScript with file extentions as the client-server protocol!