[HN Gopher] How PostScript kickstarted desktop publishing
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       How PostScript kickstarted desktop publishing
        
       Author : mfiguiere
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2022-12-08 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | kkfx wrote:
       | PostScript have followed some previous ideas but the most
       | important part is a thing lost in modern software: a programming
       | language to create documents AND applications at the same time. A
       | kind of document UI years after Xerox.
       | 
       | Modern publishing software have ditched this approach for
       | another, a fully visually one, formally easier, sometimes easier,
       | but in general limited and limiting.
        
       | PopAlongKid wrote:
       | My first "desktop publishing" experience was using troff on Unix
       | and sending output to the university's phototypsetter. Then, in
       | the second half of the 1980s, I worked at a Fortune 200 company
       | in the team rolling out PCs and networks across the company's
       | many locations.
       | 
       | At the time, the basic choice was the HP laserjet with optional
       | font cartridges (which were very expensive as I recall, something
       | like $200 each in 1980s dollars), or the Apple laserwriter which
       | was something like $4K if I recall correctly, but had Postscript
       | built in, so no need for hardware font cartridges.
       | 
       | So as a result, the HP hardware got rolled out to most offices
       | where mostly what was needed was to print memos in default
       | monospace font, while to make a nice looking newsletter, flyer,
       | or brochure, you had to travel to headquarters to use the Apple
       | printer.
        
         | dhosek wrote:
         | My first printer was an HP LJ II+ with the PostScript
         | cartridge. I had to buy extra RAM for it and for a while, I had
         | more RAM in my printer than in my computer. A few years later,
         | I bought a fancier PS printer that printed ledger size pages
         | and handled duplex and again I had more RAM in my printer than
         | in my computer. I used to occasionally write PS documents by
         | hand (one was to print out country placards for the Model
         | United Nations club at my college where for country names which
         | were especially long, the text would be auto condensed.
         | 
         | These days, with the advent of printing subsystems in the GUI
         | and the fact that software no longer needs to handle the
         | printer directly, I don't know if anyone ever buys PS printers
         | at all anymore.
        
         | the-printer wrote:
         | I was delighted to discover a full chapter dedicated to troff
         | in a textbook I picked up on Berkeley Unix. Raw documents
         | written in troff (the ones that I've seen) seem so quaint. Like
         | little homemade chicken pot pies.
         | 
         | I'm mixed on the state of desktop publishing today. I'm missing
         | that quaintness.
        
       | the-printer wrote:
       | For more discussion from an earlier iteration of this article:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33820907
        
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