Re: Turing completeness and syntactic elegance; was Re (2): Proposal: Nesting SVG Graphics Elements

Hi Peter,

I have programmed PostScript for many years and I can tell you that it is
not very elegant and not what the majority of people want.
If you want a similar experience, you should look at Canvas. It was
designed as a quick path to Core Graphics which started as a front end to
PDF 1.3+ which was a cut-down version of the PostScript drawing model.

JavaScript and PostScript share many similar traits (such as dictionaries
and the vm). JavaScript is much easier to write and read since you can
write real 'for' loops, switches, if/else statements, ...
They are also both non-retained modes, except canvas lets you bring in
content from the dom and lets you do pixel manipulation.
SVG is several layer removed from that with its reliance on DOM. This is
its strength but also a drawback as it makes scripting slower and harder.

Rik

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 9:58 AM, <peasthope@shaw.ca> wrote:

> From:   "David Dailey" <ddailey@zoominternet.net>
> Date:   Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:37:22 -0500
> > I think at the core of the debate is what sort of a thing we want SVG to
> be.
>
> A related question.  Two features of SVG and siblings are striking;
> absence of capability for calculation and clumsiness of syntax.
> In comparison, PostScript handles calculations nicely and syntax
> is elegant.  So I've always wondered about a language combining the
> capabilities of the Web markups with the syntactic elegance and
> Turing completeness of PostScript.  I guess the question has been
> discussed but I've never encountered a mention.
>
> The above is slightly provocative, only for emphasis.
>
> Regards,            ... Peter E.
>
>
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