OT: PC World are useless - was Re: [Gllug] OT: microdirect.co.ukreliable?

[Tethys]

Richard Jones writes:

>I've even found that there was an obfuscated Postscript
>competition held in 1993; you can find the results here:
>http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/postscript/obfuscated-1993/
>('labyrinth.ps' is my favorite).

To be fair, an obfuscated PostScript competition isn't much of
a challenge. Much as I love the language, it's like making an
obfuscated perl competition... it's just too easy :-)

This PostScript program is a full ray tracer. It's not just
regurgitating a pregenerated image -- it's really creating it
on the fly. Quite impressive in 11 lines of code:

%!OPS-1.0 %%Creator: HAYAKAWA,Takashi
/A/copy/p/floor/q/gt/S/add/n/exch/i/index/J/ifelse/r/roll/w/div/H{{loop}stopped
Y}def/t/and/C/neg/T/dup/h/exp/Y/pop/d/mul/s/cvi/e/sqrt/R/rlineto{load def}H 300
T translate(V2L&1i2A00053r45hNvQXz&vUX&UOvQXzFJ!FJ!J!O&Y43d9rE3IaN96r63rvx2dcaN
G&140N7!U&4C577d7!z&&93r6IQO2Z4o3AQYaNlxS2w!!f&nY9wn7wpSps1t1S!D&cjS5o32rS4oS3o
Z&blxC1SdC9n5dh!I&3STinTinTinY!B&V0R0VRVC0R!N&3A3Axe1nwc!l&993dC99Cc96raN!a&1CD
E&YYY!F&&vGYx4oGbxSd0nq&3IGbxSGY4Ixwca3AlvvUkbQkdbGYx4ofwnw!&vlx2w13wSb8Z4wS!J!
c&j1idj2id42rd!X&4I3Ax52r8Ia3A3Ax65rTdCS4iw5o5IxnwTTd32rCST0q&eCST0q&D1!&EYE0!J
&EYEY0!J0q!x&jd5o32rd4odSS!K&WCVW!Q&31C85d4!k&X&E9!&1!J!v&6A!b&7o!o&1r!j&43r!W)
{( )T 0 4 3 r put T(/)q{T(9)q{cvn}{s}J}{($)q{[}{]}J}J cvx}forall 270{def}H
K{K{L setgray moveto B fill}for Y}for showpage

>The ubiquitous PDF is derived from Postscript, by dumping all the
>programming language features, so that the interpreter can be made
>simpler and smaller.  Not that Acrobat is actually simpler or smaller.
>This also allows for sensible searching, not really easy (or even
>possible[?]) in general for Postscript files.

Nor for PDF files in the general case. Adobe have been quite clever
in selling software that creates PDFs in a specific way that does make
them searchable. But I can quite easily create you a non-searchable PDF.

PDF also adds some nice interactivity features (like form filling) that
sadly virtually nobody uses. It also supports animations, but even fewer
people use those :-) Neither forms or animations are supported by any
of the open source PDF viewers that I'm aware of, so you have to use the
Adobe reader to get the best from them at the moment.

Tet
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