Question

Question: Do you have any suggestion for better names for these functions?

Since newpath and stroke causes the current point to become undefined I usually define procedures like

/new_path     { currentpoint newpath moveto             } bind def
/close_stroke { currentpoint closepath stroke moveto    } bind def

However these names are really examples of How to write unmaintainable code, and I would rather like to call them something else but cannot come up with any good names (other than maybe something like newpath_without_undefining_currentpoint and then the benefit of using a procedure is more or less gone).

Searching for existing usage only came up with the following in pdf_ops.ps from ghostscript:

/tn { currentpoint newpath moveto } bdef % Obsolete, never used.

and tn is not exactly a better name.

Edit:
What I mean by having unmaintainable characteristics is that I end up with newpath
and new_path, both doing the same thing but slightly differently and there is nothing in the names giving anything hints about anything. I know that identifiers often are kept short to save space, but this is not an issue for my hand written files.

Answer 1

How about using /beginpath (or /startpath) and /completepath?