Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!yale!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: PS page counter
Message-ID: <4108@phri.UUCP>
Date: 10 Nov 89 14:17:42 GMT
References: <1consult@physc1.byu.edu>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY
Lines: 19


	Unfortunately, the short answer is "you can't".  PostScript is a
real programming language with loops and functions.  One could, if they
wanted, write the PS version of "for = 1 to 1000000, print 'hello'" and
unless your printer accounting software had a full postscript interpreter
in it, there would be no way to know that this little 1-line print file
would produce thousands of pages of output.

	In practice, however, most programs which produce PS output are
fairly well behaved and produce "%%Page" comments at the appropriate places
in the PS file, and don't do any looping.  It would be straight-forward to
parse the file and look for those, but you would only be able to account
for usage by honest people using well-behaved programs.

-- 
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu
"The connector is the network"