Re: Embed formatting in PostScript output (via PS print driver)

On Sep 18, 12:31 pm, Alan Ristow <ris...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Alan, thanks!

You should check out the Postscript Language Reference Manual, which
(last I checked) you could download free somewhere on Adobe's web site.
Text and commands can be mixed pretty freely in Postscript.

I will check it out...

Another way, of course, would be to generate TeX or LaTeX code from your
PCL streams -- if your PCL is as simple as you say it is, I imagine it
would be nearly trivial -- and let TeX or LaTeX handle the low-level work.

Right now, our output is (literally) as simple as setting the printer
device and then dumping, line by line, output straight to the device
(output as in text, like the actual content of our letters -- NOT
special PCL code other than escape sequences). Changing to any other
format, even something as small as changing whitespace or adding TeX
tokens, would involve touching every single @SAY command in the
application (tens of thousands of lines). If, however, I can get
PostScript working just in the spots where formatting is needed (a
substantially smaller number of lines!), then my changes are minimal.
Changing all output lines? Years. Changing formatting to be PS/PCL
agnostic? Maybe will take a month or two (if it is even possible).

I am not sure what you mean when you say PCL streams -- we are not
generating PCL streams, per se. We are sending text straight to the
PCL device and it is generating the printed output. It takes text as
straight text, and accepts eqcape sequences to format text. Our "PCL
streams", as you put it, are not some sort of advanced binary streams,
and I cannot add something to each and every output line to make the
output LaTeX-friendly. Not to mention, the number of layers are
already becoming mind-boggling: text to PS and PS to PDF is already a
lot. Changing to text to LaTeX to PS to PDF would be even more work
(then again, there has to be some work involved here -- we can't make
this pig fly forever... *smile*).

I don't necessarily think any of those would be the "right" answer. For
starters, nothing you want to archive should be stored in a closed
format like Word's....

By "right", I meant using Word as the generator, but then pumping the
output through a PostScript printer driver with subsequent conversion
to PDF. I have no problem storing archival documents as PDFs, as that
format is small, functional, and free.

Postscript doesn't have commands for making things bold, italic, etc. in
the same sense that many software packages do. It controls those things
by loading the bold, italic, etc. variants of whatever font you're
using; for example, if you're using Times Roman and you want something
in boldface, load Times Roman Bold. See section 5.1.2 of the
above-mentioned book for an example.

I will definitely check that out! My fear is that I will find dead-
ends eventually in that I won't be able to use on/off sequences in the
same fashion as PCL escape sequences (that's the part I am abstracting
out -- a custom mark-up scheme of sorts that will be able to handle
both PostScript and PCL). Also, unless the PostScript docs tell me
how to embed things like font changes within the textual content I am
sending, this won't work. I am not generating actual PS files by
hand, remember. I am sending text to a PostScript printer driver
device and it is pumping out whatever it sees fit to generate. Escape
sequences that turn text bold and italic when going to a PCL print
driver device just end up showing up in all their (textual) glory when
pumped through the PostScript print driver device. I will do a bit
more research, but I am starting to think the whole paradigm just
won't work the same when it comes to PostScript. In that case, I will
have to see about getting software approved that will convert

I truly appreciate your response!

Thanks,
JoeK

.

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