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From: rob@aeras.UUCP (Rob Rogers)
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: Re: SendPS
Summary: Sort of
Message-ID: <9103181601.AA11453@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 91 21:07:28 GMT
Expires: 25 Apr 91 07:00:00 GMT
References: <9103141524.AA00958@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: (not very often) Arix Corporation, San Jose, CA.
Lines: 77
Approved: laser-lovers@brillig.umd.edu


In article <9103141524.AA00958@crayola.cs.UMD.EDU> Denis.Russell@newcastle.ac.uk writes:
[.....]
>     I've  been  using  SendPS v1.21 on my Mac for several years
>now.  Is there a later version available?
[....]

There's a new program (couple of years old now) called DistillPS. It's
basically SendPS v1.21 with a bunch of optimizing thrown in.

Following is the (very edited by me) header of the postscript code it uses.
It pretty much tells what it is.


  %!PS-Adobe-2.1
  %%Title: still.ps
  %%Creator: Glenn Reid, Adobe Systems <adobe!greid@decwrl.dec.com>
  %%CreationDate:  greid Wed Jul  6 18:02:53 1988 EDIT: Tue Feb 28 10:24:40 1989

  % 
  % HOW TO USE: [see section below]
  %
  % OVERVIEW:
  %	This is a meta-utility program that "distills" any PostScript
  %	language program into a simpler one.  The resulting program
  %	will print exactly the same page as the original, but all
  %	unnecessary execution overhead is eliminated and the file is
  %	clean, uniform, and fast.
  %
  % RELEASE NOTES: [recent changes and details]
  %	First public release: 2/10/89
  %	Second release: 2/17/89
  %	    - reimplemented guess_font routines
  %	    - added support for color; not careful about RGB->CMYK->RGB
  %	    - added selective printing of pages during distill
  %	Third release: ???
  %	    - fixed color-induced [major efficiency loss] bug
  %	    - produces %%BoundingBox and %%PageBoundingBox info (atend)
  %	    - works better (bugs fixed) on rotated (landscape) documents
  %
  % MANY USES:
  %	* If you archive documents in PostScript format, they can be
  %	  made as compact and efficient as possible by distilling them.
  %	* As a development tool, you can see what your program is
  %	  really doing, and how simple and fast the driver could be.
  %	* Distilled files can be used as an interchange format,
  %	  since arbitrary PostScript files can be converted to this
  %	  uniform representation.
  %	* If your program can parse these files, then any arbitrary
  %	  PostScript program can be used as input after distilling.
  %	* Many others.
  %
  % FEATURES:
  %	* correctly distills arbitrarily complex PostScript programs
  %	* output is universal, simple, and in default user coordinates
  %	* handles "charpath", "image", "imagemask", "awidthshow", etc.
  %	* correctly follows "save", "restore", "gsave", "grestore"
  %	* re-encodes fonts automatically to match application encoding
  %	* reduces prologue size to only about 25-30 lines
  %	* For machine-generated code:
  %	    * output files are almost always SMALLER than original files
  % 	    * output files are almost always FASTER than original files
  %	* optimizes "show" to use "widthshow" whenever possible.
  %	* uses save/restore at page boundaries
  %	* observes structuring conventions and page independence
  %	* caches font dictionaries instead of repeating "findfonts"
  %	* output is normally VERY, VERY fast.

It still does what SendPS did, but with all these extras.
Note: you don't have to use any of them. You can just print it like it is.
I've also known it to "over optimize" (remove the whole document except the
small header). Not all the time, though.
-- 
	Rob Rogers
	Art Director, ARIX Computer Corporation
	{mips|sun|wyse|jade}!aeras!rob <> rob@aeras.UUCP <>
	73377.1017@compuserve.com <> GEnie=R.ROGERS10 <> AOL=MacGun