[comp.lang.postscript] Bitmap from NeWS on sparcstation

mkn@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Hofer) (05/10/91)

Is it possible to get the bitmap produced by the PostScript
interpreter running on a Sparcstation with OpenWindows?

We have a SparcPrinter connected to the sparcstation and the
documentation says that the printer has no native inteligence
so I am assuming the bitmap must be created by the workstation.
Therefore I should be able to get this bitmap somehow and use
it to print really big PostScript pages on our Versatec plotter.

Thanks  --Doug
	  mkn@mace.cc.purdue.edu

fh@well.sf.ca.us (Fabian Hahn) (05/17/91)

mkn@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Hofer) writes:

>Is it possible to get the bitmap produced by the PostScript
>interpreter running on a Sparcstation with OpenWindows?

Yes, of course. The easy way to do get a bitmap is to preview your 
file on screen and then screendump it to a rasterfile...

... probably you want to create bitmaps that are larger than your screen. You
can still use the the NeWS server to do this.

You need to give xnews a PostScript procedure that is executed instead of 
startup.ps that creates a canvas the size that you need for printing, scales
and images the code, and writecanvas'es the bitimage to a file. This 
is all done without calling startup.ps which starts the server on 
your console.

The PostScript procedure is not hard to write for someone who has
some experience with NeWS, finding the option that gets your code 
executed instead of startup.ps is the tricky part, Sun does not document it 
and is not very helpful. They do not want you to use their fonts for printing
unless you have paid for NeWSPrint. You only need to render graphics w/o
text, right?

The PostScript interpreter used in NeWSPrint is the standard X11/NeWS server.

fabian