Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!news.funet.fi!assari.tut.fi!assari.tut.fi!n67786 From: n67786@lehtori.tut.fi (Nieminen Tero) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: EPS Message-ID: Date: 18 Dec 90 13:42:07 GMT References: Sender: news@assari.tut.fi (USENET News System) Organization: Tampere Univ. of Technology, Finland. Lines: 34 In-Reply-To: aberno@questor.wimsey.bc.ca's message of 18 Dec 90 16:33:59 GMT Yes, it should be possible to build a program that is able to parse EPS files, provided they do not contain any fancy stuff, but are in principle like the ones produced by Adobe Illustrator. They sure enough do not contain any fancy Post Script pogramming tricks. Those primitives could be interpreted so that the program could display the picture in a way that makes editing easy (like the handles in Illustrator). Anyway, most of the time (at least in the Macintosh world), the PS files begin with a dictionairy that redescribes most of the used drawing primitives in one letter "short hand form". This editor program must be capable of interpreting these dictionaries too. After that the Post Script should be fairly standard so that different elements of the pictures could be displayed graphically on the screen. Text elements could be interpreted like Illustrator does it and so forth. All you have to know is the different primitives there are in the files you are supposed to edit. Also the programs might use some sort of grouping command (of which I'm not quite sure--that might be contained in the comments where they do not disturb). Actually this all would end up beeing something I have been longing after for so long; actually since after the Post Script standard emerged. It would be immensely useful utility. Often it's not very major changes that you need to make to pictures from other sources, more like just slight modifications. And so far nobody has had the courageous to do such an program. Maybe cause it would effectively defeat the purpose of bying just those particular commercial programs to edit the pictures in the first hand (ie. be less profitable for the big companies). Also I'm not completely sure of what sort of pitt falls there might be lurking around. Anyway, for a knowledgeable programmer with a decent set of tools such an project should not prove to be too difficult (if not the lack of documentation on the format turned out to be too big an obstacle--they're more or less proprietary). -- Tero Nieminen Tampere University of Technology n67786@cc.tut.fi Tampere, Finland, Europe