[net.text] A POSTSCRIPT question

rdkuphal@ihlpm.UUCP (Heading) (06/04/86)

Perhaps a stupid question, but I am new at POSTSCRIPT.

If one defines a user font, say consisting of one special character, does
that font stay in the (memory?) in POSTSCRIPT until the machine is
turned off?, or do you have to define the font each time you send a
POSTSCRIPT file to the printer in order to use it?

I have a font that someone gave me, and it will print when I do the
"moveto's" and "show's" in the same file as the font is defined, but
if I send the font definition to the printer, and then right after thats
done, send a file to use the previously defined font, it does not
print from the defined font, it uses the Courier font (I assume as
the default).

The second file, to use the font looks like:

erasepage newpath initgraphics
/myfont findfont 12 scalefont setfont
300 300 moveto
(b) show
showpage

Any help would be nice.

greid@adobe.UUCP (Glenn Reid) (06/09/86)

In article <807@ihlpm.UUCP> rdkuphal@ihlpm.UUCP (Heading) writes:
>
>If one defines a user font, say consisting of one special character, does
>that font stay in the (memory?) in POSTSCRIPT until the machine is
>turned off?, or do you have to define the font each time you send a
>POSTSCRIPT file to the printer in order to use it?

Every job sent to a PostScript printer executes inside the context of what
is known as the "server loop".  The PostScript interpreter essentially does
a "save" of the current state, then executes the user's job (reading through
EOF), then executes a "restore" to return to the ground state.  The
save/restore mechanism will cause all operators defined during a user job
and all memory used to be relinquished, and any downloaded fonts will go with
it.

In order for a program to use a downloadable font, the font must either be
part of the current user job (do not send EOF after the font, and do not
send the font as a separate job), or it must be downloaded "outside the
server loop".  This latter may be done using the "exitserver" operator in
PostScript (see the PostScript Language Reference Manual, Addison & Wesley,
p. 294-5).

Hope this helps....

Glenn Reid
Adobe Systems