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From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: PostScript Printing Errors
Message-ID: <190@heaven.woodside.ca.us>
Date: 29 Jun 90 05:56:27 GMT
References: <4554@milton.u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: glenn@heaven.UUCP (Glenn Reid)
Organization: Skyline Press, Woodside CA
Lines: 50

In article <4554@milton.u.washington.edu> wrb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Barker) writes:
>I have recently been plagued with problems printing PostScript files to the
>NeXT printer.  The PS code in question is generally created on some other
>platform (ie, not NeXT-created).  Symptoms include printing multiple pages of
>the same thing, spreading the image across 4 pages, and errors such as
>"Couldn't print file because of malformed PostScript"
>"Error:limitcheck; Offending Command:printerdevice"
>
>Anybody got any clues on what differences exist between NeXT PS and PS 
>from other systems--differences that might cause the above symptoms?

A common problem is that PostScript prepared for other systems (or other
printers) is not entirely well-behaved.  Some undocumented operators or
called, or features are assumed to be present that may not be.  I have
developed a few routines that I use to "emulate" some printer features
that aren't part of standard PostScript that can be helpful in getting
jobs to print from other systems (unfortunately I can't find it just
now; I'll look for it).

The basic idea is to make up definitions for the things that cause
problems.  For example, I think you can get rid of the "limitcheck" on
"printerdevice" problems by redefining a few page size operators like
this:

    %!
    /letter { } def
    /legal { } def
    /note { } def
    /lettertray { } def
    /legaltray { } def

There are a few other things that are worth defining, like those called
by the Mac print shop; I think one of them went something like this:

    /statusdict where { pop } { %ifelse
	/statusdict 20 dict def
	statusdict begin
	    /setrealdevice { } def
	    % others here
	end
    } ifelse

I wish I could find the file; I'm afraid it's on my optical disk, and
my optical drive is (sigh) non-functional.  So much for backups....

Drop me mail if you have problems, or if you have a specific file that
you can't get to work.

Glenn Reid
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us