Post Script - What exactly is it and more important, what runsit. Could us a bit of help. I have Googled, but need a little clairity. [Home Built PC]

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From: Paul on 1 Jul 2008 16:14

RC?@Not.com wrote:
> I downloaded a program with the extension .PS
> The place I got it said it was an image generator that ran in
> Postscript. My question is what is postscript. I Goggled it and it
> seems to be associated with Adobe, Photoshop I think.
> Is it a proprietary extension like LIT or DOC?
> Or, can a host of programs run this script?
> If so any suggestions? This would be something I will probably only
> run once so I don't want to by a program just to see what the script
> does. Any advice or suggestions?
> Thank
> RC

It is a language used when talking to some printers. The language is
also useful in a display context, as Display Postscript.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Postscript

(Language manual. You can even write your own PostScript programs.
I actually bought a paper copy of this, because I used to write
my own programs and make changes to other PostScript files.)

http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf

A program called GhostScript, was one of the foremost free tools
for viewing PostScript. Now, viewing or loading capability exists
in a lot of other places. For example, my copy of Photoshop can
open an individual page of a PostScript file, for viewing as a
image. Also, programs like Adobe Distiller, allow conversion of PS
to PDF, and from there, you can use the free Acrobat Reader,
to view the document easily.

Other tool flows, may be using Ghostscript (gs) underneath,
to parse and render an image.

Here is an example of a file I created and posted.

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus/msg/bae1a6844e8b046c?dmode=source

The file starts with "%!PS-Adobe-3.0", which is a declaration of
what version of PostScript is being used. Further down in the
file, the (m) and (l) command are "Move" and "Lineto", for
drawing like an Etch-a-Sketch. The "showpage" at the end, is what
would cause the printer to spit out the final rendered page on
paper. The language is very flexible, and can draw smooth continuous
curves and do all sorts of effects.

Ghostview and Ghostscript, are one way to set up a viewer. At
one time, we used to compile this stuff from source, but now
you can usually find a binary somewhere for download.

http://www.math.washington.edu/~zchen/ps.html

For example, get and install "gs860w32.exe" from here. On my computer,
the executable would be C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.56\bin\gswin32.exe ,
because I'm using a previous version.

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1897&package_id=108733&release_id=529280
( alternately http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/gs860/gs860w32.exe )

After GhostScript is installed, then you install a viewer, to make it
"easier to drive". You can actually run gswin32 manually, but that
is more akin to hacking, than using a Windows computer in a GUI way.

Link to a viewer, is on this page. Sez to use with GS 8.60 .

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/get49.htm
( http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/ghostgum/gsv49w32.exe )

Have fun,
Paul

From: Sjouke Burry on 1 Jul 2008 17:01

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