Notices

Seeing how LeafPad just got ported to ITOS 2006 ("Hail to the programmer men, programmer men, programmer men..."), a neuron woke up in my painkiller-dazed brain and I remembered this:

http://www.cs.adfa.edu.au/~gfreeman/qs.html

QuickScript is a sort of minimalist TeX-like typesetting thing. The difference with TeX is that it uses the processor of a PostScript printer instead of the computer's. You write your text using markup codes like (but not identical to!!) LaTeX codes, attach a small instruction set file at the head of your document and send it to a PostScript printer.

The manual (pdf) is here: ftp://ftp.adfa.edu.au/pub/postscript/qsdir/qsuser.pdf

Obviously, there's no WYSIWYG, but the author of QuickScript has also developed a Java sort-of-WYSIWYG (it won't work in WYSIWYG on the 770, because you need something like Ghostview to preview your page) editor, QSE, so we still might be able to do better than typing codes in an editor.

I've never actually used QuickScript (mainly because I didn't have a PostScript printer) but I'm seriously thinking about giving it a go. And if the geniuses who are now working to get a JVM onto the 770 take a look at the program, we might end up with a halfway decent wordprocessor even before Abiword is finished. And if, Bog willing, we ever get a complete Bluetooth profile for the 770, I'll hook up my parallel-to-Bluetooth dongle to my HP LJ4P (upgraded to PostScript by myself) and be the first to print directly from his 770.

For those interested, here's what I consider a very balanced opinion on printing, wordprocessing and mobile computers: http://www.ericlindsay.com/computer/printing.htm

Nice. Hope this succeeds, Karl!