PDB – ANSI-C to PostScript compiler (1993) (compilers.iecc.com)

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.

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?

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/

    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.

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

I believe that PDB came out of the 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.

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