bob.ohara@amd.com (Bob O'Hara) (09/21/90)
I have problem that I hope some of you postscript experts have solved. I
have received a very lengthy document in the form of a postscript output
file. I need to make modifications to the underlying text. Is there a
program which will un-postscript it and leave me with the bare ASCII text? I
don't care if I lose all of the formatting (pretty as it is :). I just want
the original text.
If there is a site which will email it to me or where I can access an
archive server, please let me know (I don't have ftp access to the
internet:(). Please email all replies. If there is
sufficient interest I will post a summary back to this group. Thank you in
advance for your efforts.
-Bob
Bob O'Hara Net: bob.ohara@amd.com
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Phone: +408-749-2321
P.O. Box 3453 MS 70 Fax: +408-749-2825
Sunnyvale, Ca. 94088-3000
Disclaimer: Everyone needs a disclaimer and I disclaim this one.pollack@dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jordan B Pollack) (09/25/90)
It is solved. Just ask the person who gave you the postscript for the source document in ascii form! I worry about the availability of such decoding tool in general, because my colleagues and I use postscript as a relatively secure method (secure from cut and paste plagiarism, at least) to prepublish scientific papers. Postscript was specifically chosen over TeX precisely for its ability to obscure the source text. -- Jordan Pollack Assistant Professor CIS Dept/OSU Laboratory for AI Research 2036 Neil Ave Email: pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu Columbus, OH 43210 Fax/Phone: (614) 292-4890
woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) (09/25/90)
> > I worry about the availability of such decoding tool in general, > because my colleagues and I use postscript as a relatively secure > method (secure from cut and paste plagiarism, at least) to prepublish > scientific papers. Postscript was specifically chosen over TeX > precisely for its ability to obscure the source text. You gotta be kidding. If I wanted to plagarize any prepublished papers, I'd simply scan them in, and use OCR to get the text. Now, if you are sending the raw postscript file out, it seems likely that postscript would indeed obscure the source text, but certainly if you are dealing with sending or giving someone a copy to critique or review, you would be giving them a final i.e. printed page, not the Postscript code. I think it is harder to read TeX source files with all the embedded junk in them (at least the last time I looked, TeX was a nightmare to specify anything in. Cheers Woody