fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) (06/07/90)
This must have been asked before ..., but anyone have something
to read a PostScript file and generate EPS? We have a bunch
of graphics that were generated either by hand in PostScript or
on an Atari that we would like to include in a program that allows
the inclusion of EPS.
--
Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155 (206)FOR-UNIX
uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl (206)527-3385jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George J. Jefferson) (06/07/90)
In article <810@ssc.UUCP> fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes: >This must have been asked before ..., but anyone have something >to read a PostScript file and generate EPS? We have a bunch This question gets asked alot. - but I havn't seen an answer yet. a) cant be done b) its a well kept secret c) its in the frequent questions thing and i'll never hear the end of it if a) somebody work on it, if b) somebody post it , if c) 'oh never mind' George Jefferson jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu george@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu
bochner@flare.harvard.EDU (Harry Bochner) (06/08/90)
My understanding is that a full, general solution is difficult or impossible. EPS has to promise not to interfere with what's going on on the rest of the page: if the PS program you're trying to incorporate doesn't obey this, for instance if it erases part of the page, you're going to be have to find a different way to get the same effect, and I don't see a general algorithm for doing that. The problem gets worse yet if the Postscript code breaks the rules or plays games with things in the system dicts. On the other hand, what I've often seen here is reasonably clean PostScript that already passes as EPS even if it wasn't meant to. The only problem then is that the programs that want to incorporate it are looking for a BoundingBox comment, an optional but highly desirable feature of the EPS standard. So in many cases all we really need is an automatic way to calculate the BoundingBox. A program called bb.ps that almost works has floating around for a while, and someone (cosell@bbn.com?) has been working hard just lately on getting the glitches out of this code. If he succeeds it will be a big help, so let's all encourage him ... Harry Bochner bochner@endor.harvard.edu
domae@heat.nrtc.northrop.com (Terry Domae) (06/08/90)
As I understand the problem you need to somehow send your postscript to a postscript engine (either a postscript laser printer or a postscript interpreter), then receive the rasterized picture back from that engine. If you want to do the former (send the output to a laser printer), what you need to do is then somehow get the name of the Dict entry or variable which contains the raster image, and write a postscript routine to type it back to you. The problem I have is that I can find nobody who is willing to say anything about the specific internals of the laserwriter's (specifically a way to get ahold of that rasterized page). In the postscript language definition, there are ways to change the size and character of this raster memory but no way to get a real handle on that buffer. There are some commercial packages which will, on a macintosh, send your postscript file to a laserwriter and get back the image and convert that image to EPS format for you. That package is Smartart by Emerald City Software (now an Adobe company). The routine they use is a closly held secret. But, I suppose you could monitor the appletalk and cut out the routine, but I'm sure this violates your licence of the package. There are also many postscript interpreters which you can get other raster images from, but they won't always produce the same results as your print engine (different fonts, version of postscript, ...). Terry Domae Northrop Research and Technology Center Terry Domae
domae@heat.nrtc.northrop.com (Terry Domae <tdomae>) (06/08/90)
As I understand the problem you need to somehow send your postscript to a postscript engine (either a postscript laser printer or a postscript interpreter), then receive the rasterized picture back from that engine. If you want to do the former (send the output to a laser printer), what you need to do is then somehow get the name of the Dict entry or variable which contains the raster image, and write a postscript routine to type it back to you. The problem I have is that I can find nobody who is willing to say anything about the specific internals of the laserwriter's (specifically a way to get ahold of that rasterized page). In the postscript language definition, there are ways to change the size and character of this raster memory but no way to get a real handle on that buffer. There are some commercial packages which will, on a macintosh, send your postscript file to a laserwriter and get back the image and convert that image to EPS format for you. That package is Smartart by Emerald City Software (now an Adobe company). The routine they use is a closly held secret. But, I suppose you could monitor the appletalk and cut out the routine, but I'm sure this violates your licence of the package. There are also many postscript interpreters which you can get other raster images from, but they won't always produce the same results as your print engine (different fonts, version of postscript, ...). Terry Domae
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (06/08/90)
In article <25789@netnews.upenn.edu> jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (George J. Jefferson) writes: > >This must have been asked before ..., but anyone have something > >to read a PostScript file and generate EPS? We have a bunch > > This question gets asked alot. - but I havn't seen an answer yet. > > a) cant be done > b) its a well kept secret > c) its in the frequent questions thing and i'll never hear the end of it It can be done in many cases, I believe, using Glenn Reid's "Distill" program. Distill sends a PostScript file to a networked LaserWriter, prepending a procset which intercepts the low-level drawing operations and sends them back to the Mac. Its primary purpose is to "distill" PostScript files which are to be printed frequenty... in effect expanding all of their customized PostScript operators into simple move-and-draw commands which will execute quite quickly. As a pleasant side-effect, Distill also calculates the bounding box for the image (essential information for placing an EPS file correctly). As an experiment, I took a working EPS file I had sitting around (our corporate logo), stripped off the "EPS-1.2" from the %!PS header, removed the %%Bounding-Box and similar comments, stripped out the Mac preview information, and then ran the resulting file through Distill. The resulting file was not EPS-compatible... but only two manual tweaks were needed to correct the incompatibility: 1) Change the first line to read "%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPS-1.2". 2) Delete the "%%Bounding-box: (atend)" line from the beginning of the file, and replace it with the real "%%Bounding-box" line from the end of the file. With these two changes in place, FrameMaker (on a Sun SparcStation) was willing to import the file into a document, and printed it correctly. There was no preview information present on the screen... the anchored rectangle was blank... but that didn't really present a problem. The Mac version of Distill is probably available in the /info-mac archives at SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.Edu. I imagine that there may be a Unix version available, but I'm not at all sure where to find it. I've only tried to distill one file into EPS... but the chances are reasonably good that it'd work for you. -- Dave Platt VOICE: (415) 493-8805 UUCP: ...!{ames,apple,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@uunet.uu.net USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303
news@netnews.upenn.edu (USENET News System) (06/08/90)
>The Mac version of Distill is probably available in the /info-mac >archives at SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.Edu. I imagine that there may be a Unix ^^^^ >version available, but I'm not at all sure where to find it. ^^^^^^^ From: jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George J. Jefferson) Path: eniac.seas.upenn.edu!jeffe Somebody confirm this - this would be very nice to have. Do I understand correctly that Distill brings back a ps file containing well behaved primitives rather than a raster image? George Jefferson jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu george@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu
cet1@cl.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson) (06/08/90)
In article <3151@husc6.harvard.edu> bochner@flare.harvard.EDU (Harry Bochner) writes: > ... the programs that want to incorporate it are looking for a BoundingBox >comment, an optional but highly desirable feature of the EPS standard. Actually, the BoundingBox structure comment is compulsory in an EPS file. Chris Thompson JANET: cet1@uk.ac.cam.phx Internet: cet1%phx.cam.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
bochner@flare.harvard.EDU (Harry Bochner) (06/09/90)
In article <7710@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com>, domae@heat.nrtc.northrop.com (Terry Domae <tdomae>) writes: |>As I understand the problem you need to somehow send your postscript to |>a postscript engine (either a postscript laser printer or a postscript |>interpreter), then receive the rasterized picture back from that engine. No, this isn't the issue. The EPS standard defines a way to include a bitmap in the comments, but this is optional, and shouldn't be required by programs that import EPS. FrameMaker, for instance, will use the bitmap if it's provided, so that the user can see an approximation of the included graphics. but if there's no bitmap (and if there is a BoundingBox), it will still give you a rectangular frame that you can use to position the graphics. In other words, getting the rasterized picture is lovely if you can do it, but it isn't necessary for the things we need EPS for. Harry Bochner bochner@endor.harvard.edu
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (06/09/90)
In article <25818@netnews.upenn.edu> jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (George J. Jefferson) writes: >>The Mac version of Distill is probably available in the /info-mac >>archives at SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.Edu. I imagine that there may be a Unix > ^^^^ >>version available, but I'm not at all sure where to find it. > ^^^^^^^ >From: jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George J. Jefferson) >Path: eniac.seas.upenn.edu!jeffe > >Somebody confirm this - this would be very nice to have. > >Do I understand correctly that Distill brings back a ps file containing well >behaved primitives rather than a raster image? The Distillery is a PostScript program, and as such, there is only one version of it. There is also a hack Mac program called something like DistillPS whose only purpose is to prepend the distill code to the front of a file on the Mac and to collect the resulting PS file. If you have a copy of DistillPS, there should be a file called "still.ps" in your System Folder that will work just fine from a UNIX system. In fact, it was developed on a UNIX system. Yes, the Distillery returns well-behaved primitives rather than a raster image. They actually aren't quite primitives, but simple procedures that are a bit more efficient with time and space than the native operators. Glenn Reid glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn
woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) (06/10/90)
In article <25789@netnews.upenn.edu>, jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George J. Jefferson) writes: > > This question gets asked alot. - but I havn't seen an answer yet. > > c) its in the frequent questions thing and i'll never hear the end of it > Lets start with the following: First you have to know what encapulated postscript is. The definitive information for that can be obtained from the fileserver @ adobe.com Once you have that document, then a simple text filter can be used to wrap the minimum essential information around the data. You will have to print it out, then measure the bounding box to find the entry sizes that EPS needs for the bounding box line. Cheers Woody > > > > > > George Jefferson jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu george@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu