Blog: Alan Kay on “Should web browsers have stuck to being document viewers?” and a discussion of Smalltalk, NeWS and HyperCard
Funny how computer graphics, documents, web pages etc. come from printing standards and all have PostScript in common in one way or another.
Also the idea that if you can't describe something with data flexibly enough then instead of data describe it with a DSL that gets executed at the target device.
We have been moving from data to programs on the web for many years now. In printing this has happened early on and persisted to this day. Does that mean that JavaScript (or WASM) will eventually replace HTML and CSS entirely one day?
Also it explains why PostScript (and also font) processing is such a security nightmare (try finding secure PDF reader). Should we use JS/WASM sandboxes for PostScript the same way we use them in the web browsers?