Ray Cromwell writes:
I agree, however I would point out that not all postscript interpreters are emasculated (especially those on unix systems like IRIX, they contain all kinds of calls to fork(), read()/open(), etc).
Many postscript interpreters are a serious security threat. However, I found it fairly easy to chop enough of the code out for the one I run that I feel safe with it -- the exercise wasn't that hard.
Nothing in the Java spec tells you that you must call fork() in a Java interpreter implementation. In fact, Java has nothing to do with the GUI calls, the network calls, etc. You can support as much or as little system I/O in a Java implementation as you want.
Yes, but in practice, to support the given applets that Netscape will be browsing you have to open the kimono a bit too much overall. With sufficient emasculation, I believe Java could be made safe, but then it wouldn't be the Java that Sun and Netscape are pushing any more. Perry