A PostScript interpreter for the HTML5 Canvas element
Born out of an academic exercise to learn the
PostScript language, PostCanvas
has grown into a decent interpreter of the PostScript language. It was
built as a set of JavaScript routines that implement a stack machine to interpret
plain PostScript code. The results get rendered/rasterized to the screen through
the HTML5 canvas element.
PostCanvas served me well as an enjoyable way to learn the basics of stack
machines and vector image construction as used in PostScript. I tend to
revisit it from time to time to enjoy to simplicity of programming
stack machines or to benchmark JavaScript engines. The code was moved it to its own
PostCanavas project page at
Google Code. In case anyone wants to use it, play with it, learn
with it, or extend it to do new and interesting things: It is licensed under a
permissive
Apache 2.0 license.
In April 2009 I gave a public lecture about PostCanvas to the Chaos Computer Club
in Ulm.
Recordings
of this Chaosseminar are now available.
Samples:
Here are some examples of PostCanvas including interactive console access and
sample PostScript applications that I used as references to implement basic
graphics rendering: