postscript basics

October 5, 2005 4:59 PM

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.
posted by Grod to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

You could probably do this with PSUtils but it'd be easier to use Acrobat. Distill the two .ps files into PDFs, load the first into Acrobat, delete the pages you don't want from the first (Document->Delete Pages), insert the second file (Document->Insert Pages) and then delete pages from the second file you don't want.
posted by zsazsa at 5:21 PM on October 5, 2005

Response by poster: Ah, but I don't want to delete any pages. I want to insert every other page from one file into the other, like shuffling a deck of cards (without the randomness).
This is a little more complex than I made it seem. The two files make up a workbook. The instructions are:

To assemble the text, print both files (PostScript interpretation) and merge the pages numbered 5A, 6A, ... (from the Answer Pages file) behind the pages numbered 5Q, 6Q, ... (from the other file), so that 5A follows 5Q, 6A follows 6Q, and so on. Then copy the pages to sheets printed front/back, and place them in a spiral binding or a ring binder. Note that the numbering of the answer pages does not begin at 1 because the front matter, appendix, and index are in the question pages only. Take this into account when merging the two bundles.

However, there is no information on how to accomplish this feat.
posted by Grod at 5:54 PM on October 5, 2005

It looks to me like the instructions are talking about physically printing out both files, arranging the pages in the correct order, and then feeding that combined stack into a duplex photocopier. I.e. they don't expect you to do this in software.

I'd say the above just might be the fastest way. I think that acrobat lets you rearrange pages, so you might be able to merge the two files and then drag each page into the right order.

You could automate this with the above mentioned psutils, but it would take some scripting. I don't think there is a command to do exactly what you want, but what you could do is write a script that would extract each page of both files into individual .ps files [psselect], and then concatenate them into one file in the correct order [psmerge]. But, in the time it would take you to write this script you could probably have done it by hand in Acrobat just by dragging pages.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:21 PM on October 5, 2005

If you have access to the utilities psmerge and pstops, they'll help you accomplish this. On a Windows platform, you can get these by using GnuWin32.
posted by bachelor#3 at 8:33 AM on October 6, 2005