Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!chinacat!woody
From: woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: How can I tell if a file is "postscript"
Summary: not so fast
Message-ID: <1894@chinacat.Unicom.COM>
Date: 5 Mar 91 05:26:26 GMT
References: <7647@uceng.UC.EDU> <1991Mar4.075212.12828@lth.se>
Organization: a guest of Unicom Systems Development, Austin
Lines: 26

In article <1991Mar4.075212.12828@lth.se>, d89mb@efd.lth.se (Magnus Bodin) writes:
> 
> A file to be accepted by a laser-writer must start with  
> %!
> 
> at the first line. 
> 
> Just testing that will do. But that depends on what you're gonna use

This is just plain not so.  The % is a comment.  The interpreter will just
ignore this line.  NONE of my files use the %!.  It is merely a commenting
structure having to do with EPS. (Encapsulated postscript).  Some SPOOLERS
like to see it, but the printer its self could give a rats hind end about it.
EPS has been defined by Adobe, but it has wound up being a real rats nest
of complexity.  This application can't interpret that applications eps
file and vise-versa.  In my opion it is highly over-rated and quite
useless.  But then again I don't use my postscript printer as an output
device for canned programs much, except for Pagemaker, Microsoft word,
and Arts & letters, none of the literaly thousands of programs (well over
300 disks full) that I have support Postscript so EPS really is no
big deal for me.  I have rarely derived any benifit from it, though I suppose
that if I were importing  postscript files it might have some.  Actualy
the only thing that normally affects anything is the bounding box line.

Cheers
Woody