
PDB – ANSI-C to PostScript compiler (1993) - 1ris
http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/93-01-152
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arethuza
As I recall, PDB stood for "Pure Dead Brilliant" \- this was written in
Glasgow... :-)

This was related to the NeWS/PostScript based HyperNeWS GUI environment that I
still have very fond memories of. We used it on an EU ESPRIT project with a
Lisp backend (Harlequin LispWorks).

Meant I got to work in PostScript, C and Lisp on the same project, which was
interesting.

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faragon
Anyone knows if there is another C -> PS being Open Source?

P.S. Not strictly related to this, in addition to Ghostscript (GPL), I would
like to see up to date MIT/BSD Postcript interpreters and renderers. Anyone
knows of any, even if being an old implementation?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
[https://github.com/luser-dr00g/xpost](https://github.com/luser-dr00g/xpost)

I'm not sure how complete it is though.

~~~
faragon
Thank you!

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blackwre
I remember seeing a demo of PDB at the British Telecom Software Engineering
Centre at Glasgow running on a Sun workstation around 1993.

I contacted Arthur van Hoff (who went on to Java fame) a few years ago and he
put me in touch with Tim Niblett who still has some source code, but if I
recall correctly, didn't feel that he had the authority to release it.

[https://twitter.com/avh/status/62644685486825473](https://twitter.com/avh/status/62644685486825473)

I believe that PDB came out of the Turing Institute
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Institute)
which sadly closed in 1994.

It would be great to resurrect it, but we only seem to have the binaries.

~~~
geocar
Can PDB compile PDB?

It might not be as useful as the source code, but it would at least open the
program up to being run by people without sun4 or rs6k machines.

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Lord_Nightmare
If anyone wants to play with the demo from 23 years ago, the code can still be
found at ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/languages/pdb/

~~~
geocar
Sadly it doesn't look like it's been preserved:

    
    
        pdb2.1-demo/
        pdb2.1-demo/COPYING
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/rs6000/
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/rs6000/pdb-cpp
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/rs6000/pdb-comp
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/rs6000/pdb-opt
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/rs6000/pdb
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/sun4/
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/sun4/pdb
        pdb2.1-demo/bin/sun4/pdb-comp
        tar: Truncated input file (needed 253952 bytes, only 245760 available)
        tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

~~~
Lord_Nightmare
hunting for another copy...

Found an intact copy:
ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/lang/postscript/pdb2.1-demo.tar.gz which someone
recompressed from compress to gzip at some point. The original compress
archive seems to be lost except in truncated form :(

~~~
geocar
Cool thanks.

Now I need to find some ancient boxes...

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chris_wot
I'm really curious how to program in postscript now.

