Re: vulnerabilities of postscript printers

From: Elizabeth Zwicky (zwicky_at_greatcircle.com)
Date: 01/23/04

  • Next message: Glynn Clements: "Re: vulnerabilities of postscript printers" 
    Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 11:21:52 -0800
To: Darren Reed <avalon@caligula.anu.edu.au>

    > I've never heard of anyone suggesting you could copy data
    >from one port to another, if only because there's no such thing as an
    >open file in postscript.

    Sure there is. PostScript has all the standard file handling, among
    other things for handling peripherals for font storage. Alas, I am
    moving at the moment and don't have my PostScript manuals to hand,
    but, for instance, I've written code that used PostScript filehandling
    in GhostScript to modify files in a user's home directory, and code that
    used the hard drive in a printer that had one for font caching. In general,
    PostScript printers use PostScript as their underlying OS. It is
    quite certainly a full programming language.

    >Of course if you had a postscript printer AND a the postscript cookbooks
    >you'd instantly get a better understanding.

    Umm, apparently not. Although the PostScript manuals are handy, you
    need to dig pretty deep into them to get to relatively little-used
    commands.

            Elizabeth Zwicky
            zwicky@greatcircle.com

  • Next message: Glynn Clements: "Re: vulnerabilities of postscript printers"

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