Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations Mike Lewis on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Why Post PostScript?

Status
Not open for further replies.

RogerFGay

Programmer
Jun 22, 2001
49
SE
I just want to clear up what has been a mystery to me for quite some time. I've found a lot of reports, especially academic / technical reports, posted to the PostScript. I finally downloaded Ghostscript to see if I could view them.

Can anyone make a good guess as to why people would publish their .ps files? I've often found them unaccompanied by files in any other format.
 
PostScript is the predecessor to PDF, which has mainly supplanted it as the format of choice for finished documents; many traditionalists, especially users of Unix and related systems, would still produce PS. It also has the advantage of being directly printable by most non-consumer printers.
 
Thanks Tony. That's actually been bugging me for quite some time -- ever since I found the first .ps report and couldn't read it. What you say makes perfect sense.
 
One more reason to use PS instead of PDF is that it supports flexible media control, simpex/duplex control etc. which make a lot of sense in terms of document quality. And - of course - PS easily transforms to PDF unfortunately at the expense of losing the fancy stuff I mentioned before.
 
Interesting ... I suppose the transformation requires a tool that costs a few thousand $$$$$$

 
Acrobat Distiller is the 'standard' tool, reasonably priced. Ghostscript can do it well enough for free (and pretty fast too).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top