John E Warnock

Warnock joined Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1978 where he was a principal scientist in their Computer Sciences Laboratory working on interactive graphics. As part of his responsibilities at PARC, Warnock, along with Chuck Geschke and others, worked on a printer protocol called Interpress which was derived from an interpretive language Warnock helped develop called JaM. After leaving Xerox, Warnock and Geschke evolved JaM into the "PostScript" which, when combined in 1985 with hardware from Apple Computer formed the first "desktop publishing" (DTP) system, one in which anyone could set type, compose documents, and print them as they appeared on the screen'all electronically. Because it stored fonts as outline format descriptions, PostScript was machine-independent and extremely flexible. This new approach to electronic printing allowed business users to greatly improve the quality and efficiency of their document production. Since the invention of PostScript, Adobe has become the leader in electronic imaging and publishing through internal development and acquisition, and is the industry leader in graphic arts software. He holds a B.S. (1961) in mathematics and philosophy, an M.S. (1964) in mathematics, and a Ph.D. (1969) in electrical engineering, all from the University of Utah.