Thinking in Postscript [Paperback]

Glenn C. Reid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1990

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 functions and features.

Product Details

• Paperback: 221 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley (C) (October 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201523728
• ISBN-13: 978-0201523720
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,957,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great book!, June 21, 1999

By 

Mayer Goldberg (Beer Sheva, Negev Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thinking in Postscript (Paperback)

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.