Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!mks.com!jim
From: jim@mks.com (Jim Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: GhostScript
Message-ID: <1989Oct12.143036.11269@mks.com>
Date: 12 Oct 89 14:30:36 GMT
Reply-To: jim@mks.com (Jim Gardner)
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 41

In article <835@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Kai-Uwe Rommel) writes:
>Some days ago I compiled ghostscript on DOS and changed it a bit to
>run it with 640x480 and 800x600.
>
>But when I tried to show a Postscript file produced by MS-Word or
>MS-Windows, ghostscript said that there is something undefined.

MS-Word uses an initialization file (postscrp.ini for portrait
format, postscrl.ini for landscape) to set up a number of macro
definitions.  It sends this file to the output device to set things
up, then believes that the output device will contain the definitions
for the rest of the session.  When you do a "Print File" into a file,
the Postscript is written in terms of the initialization file's
definitions.

This means that you can't just send an output Postscript file
through a Postscript printer or previewer; you have to send the
initialization file first.  However, in most cases you have to
make your own version of the initialization file because the MS
version is too aggressive.  It tries to reprogram your Postscript
device down in its heart of hearts, which is not a good thing if
you are using someone else's device.  Therefore, I found I had
to remove the first line of the initialization file.  I also had
to remove the last character, a CTRL-D (if memory serves me
correctly).  This indicates end-of-input for Postscript; the character
is okay if the input file is actually reprogramming your Postscript
device, but is useless if it's not.

Finally, you concatenate your modified initialization file and
your output from Print File into a single file.  You can send
that file to any Postscript device, and presumably to a previewer
too.

Disclaimer:  I know almost nothing about Postscript.  I just know
the sequence of steps I had to go through to put Postscript output
from MS-Word into a disk file that I could carry to a print shop
with a Postscript typesetter.  I also know that I had to figure
this out by myself; Microsoft On-line did not seem to be aware
that the initialization file had to be modified in my case.

		Jim Gardner, Mortice Kern Systems