[comp.lang.postscript] even and odd page separator.

felix@AI.SRI.COM (Francois Felix INGRAND) (07/31/90)

I am looking for a tool to separate odd and even page from a PS file.
At the end I want to be able to print double sided.

Thanks in advance,
-- 
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Francois Felix INGRAND                          SRI International, AIC
felix@AI.SRI.COM                                333, Ravenswood Avenue
felix%AI.SRI.COM@UUNET.UU.NET                   MENLO PARK, CA 94025, USA
"Pourquoi tant de haine..." (Edika)      "Read my Lisp... No new syntax" (nil)

cjroehrig@poppy.uwaterloo.ca (Chris J. Roehrig) (08/06/90)

In article <14709@unix.SRI.COM> felix@AI.SRI.COM (Francois Felix INGRAND) writes:
>I am looking for a tool to separate odd and even page from a PS file.
>At the end I want to be able to print double sided.
>

There is a shell script to do this in the NeXT ftp site at 
sonata.cc.purdue.edu under /pub/next/source called pstools.  
It creates two .ps files, one containing odd pages and one 
containing even pages. However, I have had problems getting 
it to work on complicated documents.  (When most of the BuzzNUG 
files (NeXT newsletters produced by FrameMaker) are run through 
it, the resulting two files end up generating syntax errors.)  
It may work ok for simple things, though.

If anyone knows of a better program, I'd like to hear about it, too.

An aside on counting postscript pages: if this script can determine 
which pages are even or odd, surely it could be modified to just
produce a count of the pages!


Chris Roehrig   (croehrig@audiolab.UWaterloo.ca)
Audio Research Group
University of Waterloo, Canada

felix@ai.sri.com (Francois Felix INGRAND) (08/08/90)

In article <1990Aug5.231903.6165@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cjroehrig@poppy.uwaterloo.ca (Chris J. Roehrig) writes:
> In article <14709@unix.SRI.COM> felix@AI.SRI.COM (Francois Felix INGRAND) writes:
> >I am looking for a tool to separate odd and even page from a PS file.
> >At the end I want to be able to print double sided.
> >

> There is a shell script to do this in the NeXT ftp site at 
> sonata.cc.purdue.edu under /pub/next/source called pstools.  
> It creates two .ps files, one containing odd pages and one 
> containing even pages. However, I have had problems getting 
> it to work on complicated documents.  (When most of the BuzzNUG 
> files (NeXT newsletters produced by FrameMaker) are run through 
> it, the resulting two files end up generating syntax errors.)  
> It may work ok for simple things, though.

I think I have tried this program. It makes a fairly strong assumption that the
%%Page: or %%Pages: field is correct, and check the last digit to see if it is
an even or odd number.

Unfortunately, the ps file I want to parse do not have these fields set up right.

> If anyone knows of a better program, I'd like to hear about it, too.

Me too of course.


> Chris Roehrig   (croehrig@audiolab.UWaterloo.ca)
> Audio Research Group
> University of Waterloo, Canada
--
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Francois Felix INGRAND                          SRI International, AIC
felix@AI.SRI.COM                                333, Ravenswood Avenue
felix%AI.SRI.COM@UUNET.UU.NET                   MENLO PARK, CA 94025, USA
"Pourquoi tant de haine..." (Edika)      "Read my Lisp... No new syntax" (nil)

tinkelman@ccavax.camb.com (08/08/90)

In article <14709@unix.SRI.COM> felix@AI.SRI.COM (Francois Felix INGRAND) 
writes:

>I am looking for a tool to separate odd and even page from a PS file.

There have been several followups to this.  However, I am surprised that none
have suggested what I think is a fairly simple approach, though one with a 
few drawbacks.  It is trivial to write a showpage replacement that `eats'
every other page.  Say you write two, one that eats even pages and one that
eats odd pages.  Then you just send the file to the printer twice, in each 
job prefixing the file with one of these two showpage replacements.   The cost
of this approach is clear - it takes twice as long to print the document. 
However, it works on (almost) *any* postscript file, no matter how badly
structured.

I haven't written such a program.  I feel someone must have.  If nobody posts
such a program over the next week, and you want it, send me mail and I'll do
it.
-- 
Bob Tinkelman, Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc., 212-425-5830              
bob@camb.com  or ...!{uupsi,uunet}!camb.com!bob