Postscript #1 An Introduction

An Introduction to programming with the Postscript language and viewing the results with Ghostscript, Ghostview and/or Evince.

Episode: J5B0

Postscript® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Inc.

#PostscriptTutorial
#Postscript

[OpenGLever]

For those that are running Debian and don't get a visual output by using the ghostscript interpreter.
You need to install the ghostcript-x package.

Without it, there will be no x11 output. You can check this, by entering "gs -h" in a command line. Under available devices there should be someting like x11.

[AllenGarvin]

I'd been carrying those 3 Adobe books around for the past 30 years, hardly doing anything with them, when I finally gave them away a couple years back. Now, I need to generate some visualizations of data, and finally need them. Thanks for the handy links to the PDFs and the nice intro.

[lubio]

For the issue of the auto resizing of the ghostview (gv) window. Maybe using the flag "-noresize" would help.

I cannot confirm since I don't have that problem, since I use a tiling window manager.

Others useful flags are: -infoAll (to debug prints with ==) -center -widgetless -watch -noantialias

[alexcordero]

What!?! You don't like MOTIF? Back in the day, MOTIF was the only reason that I likeed GEOS. MOTIF on a PC. Now I use it on Linux.. This was a fantastic tutorial.. thank you!!!

[HellCatLeMaudit]

I need to write a program which takes data from a database, does processing on it, and then prints out a nicely formatted output for a printer. In Linux, all I need to do is make the program save the file in LaTeX, run pdflatex on it, then call evince or the default pdf viewer so it can be viewed and printed by the user. Wonderful.

But I can't do the same under Windows. LaTeX is not a standard install on Windows. Neither is Java, which is the language I decided to use for that private software to be used company-wide. The solution I came up with is to make that private software save the file in Postscript. I only hope the default install of Windows has an available default viewer and printer driver for Postscript.

Despite Postscript not being particularly fashionable these days, it still has its uses.

[andymouse]

To be honest never heard of Post Script but still found this interesting...ya wont get rid of me that easily.

[doncurry]

Thanks. I did not know about evince. I had been using Mac preview until the latest version stopped supporting PS. Evince saves having to call ps2pdf and open to view every time a change is made.

[luserdroog]

Very nice video!


One nit: you don't need to start with 'newpath'. In fact you almost never need 'newpath', and it can cause lots of weird problems if you stick it procedures which draws things IME because it restricts how you can compose larger drawings from smaller pieces.

[turuus]

Thank you, I was exactly looking for this.

[corbinlinder]

Do you need to know postscript to develop custom RIP software for inkjet printers?

How would one begin programming/developing custom RIP software?

Wish there was more info online about this.

[JeffreyScottFlesher]

The links that want you to log in at Adobe are strange just right-clicked and save as will work.

[antohamusician]

Can I use Postscript for animation or interactive programs? For example, can I write a game in this language?

[Antyelektronika]

Hi John, what book or something like this would you suggest to learn programming microcontrollers in C language? Thanks for videos about KiCad