[comp.lang.postscript] Structuring Conventios

greid@ondine.COM (Glenn Reid) (09/07/88)

>louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes:
>> I just had this very same problem with a dvi to postscript converter that I
>> hacked up.  The problem is that the show for "Page 2" no longer has 
>> a current font!
>> 
>> Note that you do the setfont, followed by a restore, which zaps your current
>> font.  Invalidaccess?  Not really as helpfull (as, say, nocurrnetfont or 
>> something).  This is as weird one.  Happend to me the same way; first page
>> works fine, and then..
>
>Some print spoolers reverse the pages, and along the way, put a
>save-restore pair around each one.  So if you're following the PS
>formatting conventions, it's a good idea to treat each page as if
>there is no state carried over from the previous page.
>
>-Miles

Not only is this a good idea, it is *required* by the document
structuring conventions, for just the reason mentioned.

If there's one single thing that most people do wrong in claiming
to have conforming PostScript files, it is this very problem: the pages
are not functionally independent.

Please, before you put the %!PS-Adobe comment into your program, make
sure that you can put %%Page: 2 2 before %%Page: 1 1 and it will still
work.  It's not really the adding of save/restore that causes the problem;
it's typically the physical rearrangement of the code that is done for
page reversal.

Glenn Reid
Adobe Systems Incorporated