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Chuck Geschke has died

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Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#31

Post by jmenter »

cpr wrote: post #22

Chuck was one of the kindest and thoughtful people I ever met in SV in the 70's and 80's. I had taken his CMU PhD thesis on compiler optimization and applied it (in a small way) to Harvard's ECL language for my undergrad thesis project. So he flew me out to PARC the summer of my junior year ('75), and we had some good talks about it. (Which was pretty eye-opening, as I hadn't seen all the PARC goodies in person yet.)…

Thanks for writing this.

I was a big fan of Adobe through the '90s and early '00s and also noticed their devolution post-Geschke/Warnock. I wish those complaining about today's Adobe could have seen how amazing the company and their products were back then.

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#32

Post by protomyth »

coldcode wrote: post #25
protomyth wrote: post #21

Learning PostScript was a game changer for me. I am so grateful to the Adobe founders for not only the language but the documentation that accompanied it.

I too learned Postscript in 1988 and also figured out how to construct documents in Illustrator's file format (which is a precursor to PDF) so I could export to it. Postscript was a lot of fun to work in (although debugging required some real imagination and lots of paper).

I had a machine running OpenStep, so it wasn't too bad to debug. Certainly used a lot less paper. I miss that old UI.

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#33

Post by protomyth »

tpmx wrote: post #23
protomyth wrote: post #21

Learning PostScript was a game changer for me. I am so grateful to the Adobe founders for not only the language but the documentation that accompanied it.

The tutorial/cookbook ("the blue book") from 1985, with a preface by Geschke: https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/BLUEBOOK.PDF

This was such an amazing book. I had bought the paper copy and the page where they showed how to put text on a circle was amazing. It is so well written and easy to follow.

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#34

Post by twoWhlsGud »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #7
yonisto wrote: post #6

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" My love to PDF in the early 2000 turned into hatred. This format should really be abolished.

Much of the problems could’ve been avoided if PDFs embedded their own source code (e.g. the TeX that generated it) much like a website has a View Source option. Alas.

Has anyone tried using the relatively new features for "tagging" - that allows one to indicate the structure of the document:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF#Logical_structure_and_acce...

? Wondering if these are usable and how far they go to fixing the problem?

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#35

Post by tpmx »

protomyth wrote: post #33
tpmx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tutorial/cookbook ("the blue book") from 1985, with a preface by Geschke: https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/BLUEBOOK.PDF

This was such an amazing book. I had bought the paper copy and the page where they showed how to put text on a circle was amazing. It is so well written and easy to follow.

Reading it for the first time now, I get sort of the same kind of feeling that I got when I first read the K&R C book.

Was there a more affordable way of running PostScript code back then than buying a (1985) $6,995 Apple Laser Printer?

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#36

Post by tonyedgecombe »

CalChris wrote: post #24
rodgerd wrote: post #5

Photoshop, PostScript, Illustrator, Premiere. PDFs, as influental as they've been, are a footnote in the changes Adobe wrought on the creative industries. Also: "Steve Jobs attempted to buy the company for $5 million in 1982, but Warnock and Geschke refused. Their investors urged them to work something out with Jobs, so they agreed to sell him shares worth 19 percent of the company." Good call.

IIRC that included the LaserPrinter deal with Apple which kind of made the company. And I don’t think Jobs bought the shares personally but rather Apple did.

I think that deal helped Apple as well. At the time every Apple site I visited had a LaserWriter next to a Mac running some DTP software.

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#37

Post by protomyth »

tpmx wrote: post #35
protomyth wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was such an amazing book. I had bought the paper copy and the page where they showed how to put text on a circle was amazing. It is so well written and easy to follow.

Reading it for the first time now, I get sort of the same kind of feeling that I got when I first read the K&R C book. Was there a more affordable way of running PostScript code back then than buying a (1985) $6,995 Apple Laser Printer?

GhostScript was 88, Sun NeWS was 86ish, and Adobe Distiller was 1993. I had an Intel NeXTSTEP 3.3 machine in 95.

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#38

Post by CalChris »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #36
CalChris wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC that included the LaserPrinter deal with Apple which kind of made the company. And I don’t think Jobs bought the shares personally but rather Apple did.

I think that deal helped Apple as well. At the time every Apple site I visited had a LaserWriter next to a Mac running some DTP software.

Yes, it did help Apple as well. Moreover, Apple made a lot of money on the stock back in 1989 when Adobe went public.

  Apple's 3.42 million shares of Adobe, purchased in November 1984 for $2.5 million, are now worth about $84 million. Based on today's price, Apple would register a pretax gain of more than $80 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, ending in September.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/07/business/apple-selling-ad...

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#39

Post by tpmx »

Zhenya wrote: post #30
cpr wrote: post #22

Chuck was one of the kindest and thoughtful people I ever met in SV in the 70's and 80's. I had taken his CMU PhD thesis on compiler optimization and applied it (in a small way) to Harvard's ECL language for my undergrad thesis project. So he flew me out to PARC the summer of my junior year ('75), and we had some good talks about it. (Which was pretty eye-opening, as I hadn't seen all the PARC goodies in person yet.)…

More details about the kidnapping for those who are interested: https://www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/news/215-news-b...

Parts 2, 3 and 4 (there are no links to the next part in the article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850088

Re: Chuck Geschke has died

#40

Post by tpmx »

protomyth wrote: post #37
tpmx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading it for the first time now, I get sort of the same kind of feeling that I got when I first read the K&R C book. Was there a more affordable way of running PostScript code back then than buying a (1985) $6,995 Apple Laser Printer?

GhostScript was 88, Sun NeWS was 86ish, and Adobe Distiller was 1993. I had an Intel NeXTSTEP 3.3 machine in 95.

Did you/people in general think NeWs made sense, performance-wise? What was the general belief back then?
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