Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!milano!peyote!johnk
From: johnk@peyote.cactus.org (John Knutson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: encapsulated postscript
Keywords: ibm mac argh
Message-ID: <288@peyote.cactus.org>
Date: 24 Nov 89 23:21:07 GMT
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas Unix Society, Austin, TX
Lines: 30

A few weeks ago, I got the encapsulated postscript format file description
document from adobe's mail server.  after reading over the document I
decided to try to import the example EPS file into pagemaker and print it.

No such luck.  All I got was a blank page.  I gave up after a few attempts.
When I got home, I sent some mail to my favorite local postscript guru.
I found out that mac and ibm EPS formats were different.  Great.

WHY are there two different formats?  Isn't that defeating the purpose of
having postscript at all?  Wasn't postscript designed to be the page
definition standard?  If so, why have postscript mutations?  "Well if you're
using machine a, then postscript means this, but if you're using machine
b, then postscript means this."

That's kinda like saying "well to display something in pascal on a pc you use
'writeln', but on a mac you use 'scuzzywacker'".

argh.

The whole point in my trying to figure out EPS was to modify a graphics
program I have to produce postscript output, IE I want to print (gasp) bit
mapped images.  As far as I can tell, EPS has better support of bitmaps than
PS, and the same goes for color.  Which reminds me, what if you import (if you
even can) an EPS file that has a bitmap image with a depth of 2+ bits and
you're printing to a printer that doesn't support color?  I'm using, for the
most part, pagemaker to import the EPS files, if that's important (and I'm
sure it is).

Anyway, would I be better off trying to use straight PS or should I try to
make sense out of the two EPS file standards?