scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2138653
On the face of it this fine book is just a text or instructional manual introducing its readers to the PostScript computer language. One might well wonder why such a thing might be of interest to the Zentralblatt's readers. Let me try an anecdote: Loosely speaking, PostScript consists of instructions to draw collections of line segments of given colour, thickness, length, direction, and starting point. Given a suitable printer, that's enough to produce beautiful \TeX\ output, at any resolution. Twenty or so years ago when laser printers first became available I dearly wanted one for the use of my group to beautify the appearance of our preprints; but such infrastructure was not a permitted research expenditure. Accordingly I found a project requiring a research tool able to render PostScript, namely further to study polygons with vertices the partial sums \(z_{n}\) of certain exponential sums \(\sum_{h=0}^{n-1} \exp(2\pi i u_{h})\); particularly nice examples the reader should wish to try include \(u_{h}=(\log h)^{4}\), \(u_{h}=h^{3/2}\), \(u_{h}=h^ {3}/2010\); see [\textit{R. R. Moore} and \textit{A. J. van der Poorten}, Geometry and Physics, Proc. Miniconf., Canberra/Aust. 1989, Proc. Cent. Math. Anal. Aust. Natl. Univ. 22, 82--109 (1989; Zbl 0696.10035), \textit{M. V. Berry} and \textit{J. Goldberg}, Nonlinearity 1, No. 1, 1--26 (1988; Zbl 0662.10029), \textit{J.-M. Deshouillers}, Elementary and analytic theory of numbers, Banach Cent. Publ. 17, 75--82 (1985; Zbl 0616.10031), \textit{D. H. Lehmer}, Mathematika 23, 125--135 (1976; Zbl 0346.10020)]. Whatever, the PostScript programs involved are about as simple as can be -- since the consecutive line segments vary only in direction -- and some outputs are both beautiful and mathematically suggestive. Here the author does much more because there's somewhat more to PostScript than I `loosely' suggest above. He emphasizes the basic geometric notions implicitly, sometimes explicitly, required in the PostScript programs -- so much so that he is able to point out, perhaps surprisingly, that ``[this book] has been used successfully as a text for a third-year undergraduate course in geometry; in brief, learning to draw with PostScript is applied geometry. I recall that for a period Bill Casselman was the American Mathematical Society's illustrations editor with his ideas and designs particularly gracing its Notices. Of course it's not essential that we all be competent PostScript programmers, but if our work could be enlightened by the occasional diagram it is at the least desirable that we have at hand the tools with which our assistants and graduate students will aid us (asked what programming language he and Bryan Birch used in the computations leading to their eponymous conjectures, Peter Swinnerton-Dyer is said to have firmly replied ``graduate student). In that sense at least this manual demands a place on our bookshelf. Should we choose to glance at it we will find it instructive and attractive reading.
This page was built for publication:
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q4652240)
