gilmore@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Scott Gilmore) (05/10/89)
Hello. [ I apologize if this has been discussed here before. I just recently subscribed to this group. I looked through the titles of the last 2000 postings and it was discussed there, although the reverse case of Mac -> postscript -> TeX was discussed. ] I have a graphics program running on a VAX for which I can purchase a Postscript driver. I would like to generate figures using the program, then save them as Postscript files on the VAX and transfer them to a Mac. From there I would somehow like to import them into MacDraw, MacDraft, or any other Mac program that will allow me to add annotation text and lines to the figure. (I will eventually paste these figures into a TeX document using the Textures package; I know how to do this once I have them inside a Mac application.) I don't know whether the postscript driver for the VAX (from Precision Visuals, Inc.) produces encapsulated postscript or just plain postscript files. What I need to know is if there are any programs on the Mac that can import these postscript files (at full resolution) and let me annotate them. I have read that Adobe Illustrator can import them, but I've heard that it cuts the resolution down to 72dpi. Is this true? What other options are there? I know that I can use a graphics terminal emulator such as VersaTerm or NCSA Telnet to cut the figures from the screen while running the VAX application, but that also loses a lot of resolution. Email responses are preferred. Thanks very much. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Scott Gilmore Research Assistant University of Delaware gilmore@vax1.acs.udel.edu Center for Composite Materials gilmore@oscar.ccm.udel.edu Dept. of Mechanical Engineering gilmore@minnie.me.udel.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) (05/12/89)
In article <3589@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> gilmore@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Scott Gilmore) writes: > What I need to know is if there are any programs on the Mac that can import > these postscript files (at full resolution) and let me annotate them. I have > read that Adobe Illustrator can import them, but I've heard that it cuts the > resolution down to 72dpi. Is this true? What other options are there? Illustrator 88 will import an Encapsulated Postscript file. When previewing, it will display the associated picture (72 dpi) or a gray box if none. When printed, however, it uses the actual Postscript. You can apply Illustrator's transformations, and the resulting output will be transformed as well. There is an article on AppleLink describing how to convert plain Postscript into Encapsulated Postscript. This is a Pagemaker Technical Note from Aldus. A summary of the process is: (1) Print the Postscript. (2) Measure the bounding box of the image in points (72 points = 1 inch). (3) Add the following to the start of the Postscript file: %!Adobe-2.0 EPSF %%Creator: <your name> %%CreationDate: <a date> %%Title: <a title> %%BoundingBox: <left> <bottom> <right> <top> where <left>, <bottom>, etc. are the distances you measured. This is with the coordinate system origin at the lower left corner of the page. For example <left> is the distance from the left edge of the page to the left edge of the image, and <right> is the distance from the left edge of the page to the right edge of the image. (4) Save the file as text-only. You will then be able to import this into Illustrator using its Place command. You can then transform the imported image and add annotations. When you preview the image, you will see a grey rectangle for the imported data (unless you manually add a picture to the file). I tried this with a simple Postscript program and it worked for me. You have to be sure that the Postscript doesn't contain any of the operators that are not allowed in EPS files (e.g., initgraphics, exitserver, etc.). Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc. Object Specialist Internet: lsr@Apple.com UUCP: {nsc, sun}!apple!lsr AppleLink: Rosenstein1