Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with postscript

How do I print an old dos-era postscript file (font encoding: codepage 850) containing german umlauts?

pu9iad — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:26:21 -0800

MS-DOS/Legacy file format filter: How do I convert an old postscript file (font encoding: codepage 850) containing german umlauts to pdf?/ How do I print such a file on modern printers? Hi everybody,

basically, I need to print out / convert to pdf several really old postscript files, which were created by a dos app (1) and contain german umlauts. The font encoding of the files is done in such a way that e.g. for ü the character number is \201 (Codepage 850).

If I open these files with Ghostview or GSView the umlauts are not displayed at all.But I guess if I could get a hold of an old MS-DOS-era printer (that understands codepage 850), the files could be printed out correctly with this little utility, which is able to send postscript files directly to a printer.

Since such a printer is a difficult item to get nowadays, I've tried another approach:
I've tried to send the files with Printfile to a virtual Adobe postscript printer, which in turn should generate a new postscript file with an up-to-date character set. However, the results were the same: no umlauts were displayed.

Does anybody know how to solve this problem? From my point of view the best solution would be to convert the postscript files to pdf. But if that is not possible I would still be very!!! happy, if someone could tell me how to at least print these files.

Thanks in advance,

pu9iad

(1):Neither do I recall the app's name, nor do I have copies of the document in another file format.

Virtual scissors and tape: Page assembly?

Myself — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:41:20 -0800

I want software to split, combine, tile, and imposition pages (produced by different apps) before sending the job to the printer. Can I do this without spending megabucks on Acrobat or learning to read and write PostScript by hand? I'm on Windows XP. My current task is producing double-sided quarter-sheet flyers. They should have a Google map on one side, and some text from a word processor on the other. The printer can do 4-up printing and duplexing, but only if the pages are all part of the same print job. So what I want to do is capture the map page on its way to the printer, and capture the text, and combine them into a single document that's (map, map, map, map, text, text, text, text) and then feed that to the printer in 4-up duplex mode.

It would also be nice to do combine multiple pages onto one sheet even on printers that don't support it in their drivers. Ideally, such software would also let me enlarge a vector PDF and tile it across an arbitrary number of letter-sized pages for printing. (Rasterbator only accepts bitmapped images, not PDFs, as input.)

I've tried FinePrint (can't seem to combine print jobs), HP Smart Web Printing (sounds useful but isn't), PF-Merge (requires Acrobat), GreenPrint (can't combine jobs), etc.

I think I could do this by printing everything to PostScript files, manually concatenating the files, and maybe learning a bit of PS glue to make it all work. Is that my best option?

High-Detail GDSII to EPS/PDF?

DoubleMark — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:19:35 -0800

FileFormatFilter: Asking for a (not terribly computer-proficient) labmate in need. He uses flexible photomasks, printed on some kind of transparency. He has a company that will do this. He also has a layout, currently in CIF and GDSII format, with a very fine grid of dots. The company only accepts EPS or PDF. How can I accomplish this while A> maintaining a reasonable file size and B> maintaining the detail? The layout to be printed contains an array of very small (order microns) dots. Thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands. The CIF file is small, presumably because it has some idea of what a matrix duplication is and is not naively describing every element. This file can be turned into a GDSII file weighing in at 200 MB.

The printing company, PageWorks, assures my labmate that he can get things printed with a 5 micron minimum feature size, no problem. The difficulty lies in the file formats they take. The native file formats of our layout program are CIF, DXF, and GDSII. They want EPS or PDF.

A PDF print driver-or at least, any of the ones I can find-is insufficient, since it won't print at a DPI high enough to capture the grid detail.

Our layout program can export (in a brain-damaged way) to PostScript. The PostScript file so created, not being so clever about the matrix elements, is 780 MB. He could throw this at ps2pdf on a big computer, come back in a week, and ship it to them on DVD, but this seems somehow dumb.

Is there some cleverer way to convert one of the native file formats into something a little more reasonably sized? I am sure there is a cleverer way to use PostScript, but my Google-fu is exhausted. I will happily provide any additional information needed, since there's probably a lot I didn't think to mention, and I am certainly open to new methods of laying out the photomask.

How can I display colorful directed graphs on the web?

christonabike — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:52:17 -0800

How do I take a graph that looks like this and display it in a web friendly format? Oh, and there's 300,000 of them. The graph linked is a screenshot of a postscript file generated by the "dot" portion of Graphviz. Essentially, I have a bunch of flat text files describing directed graphs (i.e. which nodes are linked to which and what color the links/nodes should be). I need to display these directed graphs on the internet. The nodes on the graph need to be clickable, as well.

Ideally, the processing to turn the text file into the graph would also be done on the client side, but this isn't necessary. The graphs don't need to be capable of being manipulated, but that would be cool as well. The best idea I've got so far is to use Flash/ActionScript and do something similar to this, but I've never actually used flash so I have no idea if it will scale well or can even actually do what I want it to.

How to email my font?

artdrectr — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:51:18 -0800

I can't seem to email (gmail) font files to a client. What am I missing? Working from a Mac and trying to send a few postscript fonts (gill sans, univers). When I attach the font files (screen font & printing font) in my email they show up with a file size of 0kb. Yes, I'm linking to real fonts with real sizes (140kb), not aliases.
Do they need to be compressed in a Stuffit-like app? What's up?

PostScript + Unicode

iconjack — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:04:53 -0800

Can I use Unicode characters in PostScript strings? Does PostScript understand Unicode? (in particular, the PostScript as implemented by GhostScript 4.6 or beyond)

If so, how can I insert a Unicode character, for example U+2204, into a string literal?

Not a Post to Script in

evil holiday magic — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:14:25 -0800

Any recommendations for a PostScript RIP for Mac OS X? Based on a lot of gushing reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, I made the recommendation for our small office to get the HP Color LaserJet 3550.

It's alright, I guess... but I missed one small detail in my research...

No #$%#% PostScript. No PS in a laser? I had not heard of such a thing. In a graphic design environment, with lotsa Quark files flying around everywhere, and outputting to PDF first is getting old, something must be done.

Free divider/filigree line art?

anonymoose — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 16:27:27 -0800

Find me some free, nice divider/filigree images that I can use in a printed booklet without getting pixelated looking. Stuff like this, but better: Looking for stuff a little less florid, a little more organic, a little bolder, and ideally a format that can easily be printed without looking like some jpeg I found online.

Postscript code for epicycloid?

dmd — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:51:28 -0800

I want a true vector-based (i.e., not merely a series of thousands of line segments) Postscript or Illustrator file of an epicycloid where a=5, b=2. This is the image I'm after. The equations for an epicycloid a=5,b=2 work out to [x=7cos(θ)-2cos(7θ/2), y=7sin(θ)-2sin(7θ/2)], θ=0..4π.

I have no problem creating this in Grapher or Matlab or Maple or what have you using that equation, but if I try to export an EPS file, what I get is essentially a high resolution bitmap — a list of thousands of straight lines that make a facsimile of the shape if it's not enlarged too much.

Does anyone have enough of a command of Postscript to actually write up the code that would generate the true vector representation? Is that even possible in postscript?

postscript basics

Grod — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:59:27 -0800

PostScript basics. I have two .ps files meant to be joined together in such a way that, if printed double-sided, fileA page1 would be on one side of a page whiel FileB page1 would be on the other. I have at my disposal both Acrobat and GhostScript though I've never used either to directly manipulate ps files like this. I'd like the output to be a single pdf document suitable for printing on a laser printer.

PostScript help

shannymara — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:09:10 -0800

My Google-fu is failing.. yada yada... I am trying to create some simple PostScript output and need a simple how-to. I want to write a software program that outputs a diagram consisting of (1) text blocks and (2) vector lines, and tweak it later in Illustrator. How can I make a Postscript or EPS file (whichever is best) with these? I can't seem to find a good overview of PostScript or EPS that isn't too technical or too ambiguous.

DRM: Help me prevent copying of something printable.

namespan — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 21:02:13 -0800

DRM Filter: I've got some material I'd like to distribute online in a print-friendly format... but I'm considering limiting electronic pass along. PDF or Post Script would probably be the ideal format, but can they be machine-locked or something else that would prevent someone from forwarding to all their friends? Also: is there a way to track a PDF every time it's opened (similar to, say, embedding a remote transparent gif in an HTML doc and tracking requests?). The reason I ask is that I'm also considering trying to make a case for no DRM and a sale price below the impulse purchase/lunch threshold, but I'd have to be able to track use and come up with stats that could justify DRM-less distribution by showing that most people buy rather than steal anyway.

What's the best file format to save an Illustrator image to be placed in a Word PDF?

punkfloyd — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 10:58:50 -0800

What is the best file format to output an outlined logo from Illustrator v.10. for use in a Word (2002) document that will ultimately be converted to PDF? When I save the logo as an .EPS (as suggested in a previous post) I get a jagged pixilated image in Word. When I export as a TIF I get that inefficient, non-vector, slightly bitmappy look even when done at 300dpi. I am using Windows 2000 and yes, Word must enter the equation.

OS X 10.3, older fonts, and unusual glyphs.

adamrice — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 13:20:21 -0800

OS X 10.3, older fonts, and unusual glyphs [more inside] I'm using Panther, and I've got a lot of older postscript fonts from at least the System 7 era. These contain a number of "high-ASCII" characters, like =, that I cannot get at under OS X for some reason. The fonts bundled with OS X show the characters and let me type them as before, but in the older fonts, they're somehow off-limits. Typing the appropriate key combination leaves a blank space, and the "character palette" does not show the font as having the character. And yet, for some reason, the character is visible in the "keyboard viewer."

Has anyone encountered this problem? Any ideas on solving it? Thanks in advance.

Adobe competitors in the PostScript/EPS/PDF axis?

blueshammer — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 09:21:25 -0800

Am I overestimating Adobe by saying that their PostScript/EPS/PDF axis is one of the most unbreakable semi-monopolies in modern computing? Does it have any serious competitors in that regard?