Origins of Postscript.

[luser- -droog]

We know from the PLRM that there was a language called JaM
for John (Warnock) and Martin (Newell) and it as used at
Evans and Sutherland for interactive graphics.

Does anyone know more? Is there any kind of E&S anthology
like the Xerox Papers? (samizdat? est nemnogo dengi.)

Incidentally the stack architecture was inspired by
Burroughs Large Systems (the same inspiration for FORTH),
although the idea goes back at least to Lukasiewicz.

And as for the Stencil(Map-Clip-Reduce)-Paint-Mask image
model; perhaps just Warnock's genius? Although most of
the pieces are in the Newman-Sproull texts.

And did Sutherland have any direct influence, besides the
precendent of Sketchpad and the auspices of owning
the company?

[onewing...@gmail.com]

It sure doesn't answer many of your questions, but this interview does go into its [PostScript's] history a bit. Apparently JaM was VERY much like PS.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2418

[luser- -droog]

On May 24, 10:10 pm, onewingedsh...@gmail.com wrote:
> It sure doesn't answer many of your questions, but this interview does go into its [PostScript's] history a bit. Apparently JaM was VERY much like PS.
>
> http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2418

Very nice. I especially like this part:

| Knowledge@Wharton: What surprised you most about the evolution of
these
| technologies -- PostScript and PDF?

| Warnock: The fact that there was this whole cult group that fell in
love with
| PostScript and making PostScript programs. That was a little
surprising. It's a
| "write once" language. It's not terribly self-documenting. It is
very hard to
| figure out what is going on.

That's us, friends!

[luser- -droog]

From a 1986 interview:

INTERVIEWER: When did you come up with the original idea for the PostScript language?

WARNOCK: PostScript started in the Evans and Sutherland days when we were doing a harbor simulator for the Maritime Academy. We had to build a digital model of New York harbor, with 1,500 buildings and tank farms, and all the bridges and buoys and everything–all the landscape. The simulator was going to project the view of the harbor as seen from the bridge of the ship. We needed to write a huge, three-dimensional database and a lot of real-time software to make the simulator work the way they wanted it to.

We had a year to complete this massive undertaking. It was a full-color model with all three dimensions. We decided the most stupid thing we could do was to design this database in a form that would be used directly by the simulator. In other words, to bind it up too tightly. We decided to create a text file and then write a compiler to compile the text file into the form that the simulator would need (whenever we decided what that would be). We still didn’t know what the simulator was going to look like.

So we started building this huge database in text form. In digitizing the database and in building this big three-dimensional model, it became very obvious that rather than having a static data structure in the text file, it was much more reasonable to have a language. It needed to be a very simple, easily parsed, and extensible language. So that’s where the basic ideas of PostScript got started, in developing a language for this three-dimensional graphic database.


http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/john-warnock/

[luser- -droog]

This post from the archive of the Laser-lovers mailing list
goes into quite a bit of history about the people involved
and their various migrations among E&S, Xerox, CMU, DEC, etc.

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/fa.laser-lovers/H3us4h8S3Kk/discussion

And, some similar information in a post that shortly followed.

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/fa.laser-lovers/y_9uLiN0ixA/discussion

[luser- -droog]

According to this document, page 33, JaM was written in the Mesa programming language:

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/parc/Exploring_the_Ethernet_with_Mouse_and_Keyboard_May81.pdf

[luser- -droog]

On Wednesday, December 7, 2011 4:04:56 AM UTC-6, luser- -droog wrote:

Found something. "Something like an E&S anthology".

http://www.es.com/About/Patents.html

And down towards the bottom:

COMMAND LANGUAGE SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVE COMPUTER
Inventors: GAFFNEY JOHN (US)
Patent Number: US 4539638 Issue Date: 850903

That, I suspect is talking about
The Evans and Sutherland Design System
recounted to have been authored by Gaffney
in several of the histories linked in this thread.

[luser- -droog]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 2:00:41 AM UTC-6, luser- -droog wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 7, 2011 4:04:56 AM UTC-6, luser- -droog wrote:
>
> > We know from the PLRM that there was a language called JaM
> > for John (Warnock) and Martin (Newell) and it as used at
> > Evans and Sutherland for interactive graphics.
> >
> > Does anyone know more? Is there any kind of E&S anthology
> > like the Xerox Papers? (samizdat? est nemnogo dengi.)
> >
> > Incidentally the stack architecture was inspired by
> > Burroughs Large Systems (the same inspiration for FORTH),
> > although the idea goes back at least to Lukasiewicz.
> >
> > And as for the Stencil(Map-Clip-Reduce)-Paint-Mask image
> > model; perhaps just Warnock's genius? Although most of
> > the pieces are in the Newman-Sproull texts.
> >
> > And did Sutherland have any direct influence, besides the
> > precendent of Sketchpad and the auspices of owning
> > the company?
>
> Found something. "Something like an E&S anthology".
>
> http://www.es.com/About/Patents.html
>
> And down towards the bottom:
>
> COMMAND LANGUAGE SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVE COMPUTER
> Inventors: GAFFNEY JOHN (US)
> Patent Number: US 4539638 Issue Date: 850903

Hmm. The date don't really fit the time-frame,
does it? :(

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.lang.postscript, luser- -droog <mij...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 2:00:41 AM UTC-6, luser- -droog wrote:
> > COMMAND LANGUAGE SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVE COMPUTER
> > Inventors: GAFFNEY JOHN (US)
> > Patent Number: US 4539638 Issue Date: 850903
> Hmm. The date don't really fit the time-frame,
> does it? :(

What's the time-frame? Filing date is in 1981, and Priority date is in
1979.

http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/2343.html

What is the difference between a filing date and a priority date?

The terms filing date and priority date are often used
interchangeably, but they are not the same. The filing date is the
date when a patent application is first filed at a patent office.
The priority date, sometimes called the "effective filing date", is
the date used to establish the novelty and/or obviousness of a
particular invention relative to other art.

The priority date may be earlier than the actual filing date of an
application. If an application claims priority to an earlier parent
application, then its priority date may be the same as the parent.

[...]

Patents take a while to issue, after all.

Elijah
------
google includes a disclaimer that the "filing date" they offer may be wrong

[luser- -droog]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 3:14:16 PM UTC-6, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> In comp.lang.postscript, luser- -droog <mij...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 2:00:41 AM UTC-6, luser- -droog wrote:
>
> > > COMMAND LANGUAGE SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVE COMPUTER
> > > Inventors: GAFFNEY JOHN (US)
> > > Patent Number: US 4539638 Issue Date: 850903
>
> > Hmm. The date don't really fit the time-frame,
> > does it? :(
>
>
> What's the time-frame? Filing date is in 1981, and Priority date is in
> 1979.
>

Well, based on this paragraph from Brian Reid's
Postscript/Interpress comparison from laser-lovers,
I was expecting to find something from earlier in the 70s.
It does appear from this that there ought to be
documentation for the Design System from around 1975.

Although the Evans and Sutherland company is primarily in Salt Lake
City, they had a small research office in Mountain View (California)
in the early 1970's. John Warnock was in charge of it, and John
Gaffney worked for Warnock. One of the activities of the Mountain
View office was to develop software for producing 3-dimensional
graphical databases both for the Picture System and for the
simulation machines. Working with Warnock, Gaffney had by 1975
programmed and documented and released the first version of a
programming language that was called "The Evans and Sutherland Design
System". -- https://groups.google.com/d/topic/fa.laser-lovers/H3us4h8S3Kk/discussion

But based on the abstract from the patent, this very well may be it!

A command language system is disclosed wherein memory stacks register specific definitions for generic names, which definitions are appropriately selected in timely response to a name, on the basis of stack arrangement. A structure is included for searching the stack in order and detecting the first definition for a name of current interest. Thus, the stack is used to define the order of the name searching. As a consequence, in the interpretation of command languages, the user is given control over the context in which the names are executed. Specifically, a command program wil behave according to the definitions of the commands in a current context. The system further includes structure for deleting definitions from the stack which have been used and for sensing the bottom of the stack as a function of control.
-- http://www.patentbuddy.com/Patent/4539638