stevec@fornax.UUCP (Steve Cumming) (06/08/88)
Our site has a common problem: people make pictures using a pipe like this: pic foo.pic | eqn | ditroff | psdit > foo.ps (We use Transscript's ditroff and psdit) They then want to include foo.ps in some other document, say a research paper. Then, they want to run a page filter to select some of the document pages curently under revision. Our local page filter, and I think almost any possible one, breaks, because it relies on PostScript document structuring conventions, which break down when several conforming documents are improperly merged I hacked a temporary fix, and then discovered the folowing useful document (Well, OK, got finally around to reading it.) Namely, "Adobe Systems Document Structuring Conventions, Version 2.0", dated Jan 31 87, and the supplement: "Encapsulated PostScript File Format V 1.2", from March 12 87. The EPSF format describes how a document should be structured in order to include it within another PostScript file. It specifies postscript operators to avoid, and defines a bunch of PostScript comments in which the document should be wrapped. The idea is that a smart filter will recognise the wrappings and handle the included file appropriately. I decided to scrap my local hacks, and implement the standard, either by writing a backend to psdit, or hacking psdit or both. So has anyone allready done this? Would anyone be interested in getting it from me if I actually manage it? You'll certainly need to use Transcript for my vapour ware to be any good... Has anyone given serious thought about how to manage a docuement production environment which generates PostScript code from TeX, ditroff, Scribe, peoples lap dog computers <and> hand hacking? Steve Cumming School of Computing Science Simon Fraser University Vancouver, BC stevec@lccr.sfu.cdn ubc-cs!fornax!stevec