d85-kai@nada.kth.se (Kai-Mikael J{{-Aro) (11/16/89)
Is there a driver which will convert a PostScript program to "nearest
ASCII equivalent"? I have some PS files that mainly produce text, so
I'd like to be able to just make a plain dumb-screen legible version
of them...
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Kai-Mikael J{{-Aro d85-kai@nada.kth.se
"You know how Einstein had bad grades as a kid? Well, mine are even WORSE!"
- Calvinspage@cup.portal.com (S spage Page) (11/20/89)
PostScript cranks out text mainly through the use of the `show' operator and its variants. This takes a PostScript string, which is ASCII characters in parentheses. Most programs which generate PostScript have a prologue which defines custom procedures, e.g. "J takes an offset on the current line and outputs text, M takes a vertical offset and prints text at the left margin." The result is that you can "see" the text pretty easily in the PostScript output file, and you might be able to write a filter which pulls out all the stuff in parentheses. If you really care you could try to convert special characters in the encoding like em-dashes and fancy quotes to plain ASCII. However, you'll probably have more trouble with spaces. Lots of programs output tiny text strings (no wonder their PS output prints slowly!) and it's hard to tell where the spaces should go. Good luck, your mileage will vary. =S