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From: bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Printerdrivers producing Postscript ??
Message-ID: <2928@reed.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 29-Mar-86 13:27:14 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.2928
Posted: Sat Mar 29 13:27:14 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Apr-86 06:39:48 EST
References: <279@daimi.UUCP> <2063@uwmacc.UUCP> <12759@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: bart@reed.UUCP (Bart Massey)
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 34

In article <12759@ucbvax.UUCP> korn@ucbvax.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) writes:
> ... 
> I'm sorry, but what you said here is *not* true.  The LaserWriter printer
> is a real PostScript printer, true enough; but the LaserWriter printer
> driver that a macintosh uses doesn't produce TRUE PostScript code.  Rather
> it produces a half-way code that the faster 68000 on the LaserWriter 
> completely decodes, according to the instructions in a file called
> "LaserPrep", which the mac always downloads previous to printing the
> first time.  The exception to this is Aldus Pagemaker, which has yet
> a third coding scheme-->this is why there is a file called Aldus Prep.
> 
> One could argue (read "flame") that the two taken together constitute
> "real" Postscript.  My answer:  you take the file generated by your
> mac (and created on disk by holding down command-F while printing) and try to
> find each and every instruction listed therein in a Pagemaker manual.

I think you mean "PostScript" rather than "PageMaker" above and below,
don't you?  One certainly could argue that both files are "real
PostScript".  What do you mean by half-way code?  The Prep files just
contain a set of PostScript procedures...  The file itself just calls
those procedures as part of its code.  You're going to claim that if
you have a C program split into two files, the second one isn't "real
C code", because all of its calls aren't in K&R ??

> What is unfortunate is that there isn't (yet...) a program that will take
> the *Prep file and the command-f'd output and come up with the true
> Pagemaker code that one could very easily modify (as, to my knowledge, there
> is no manual outside of apple that explains all the commands they use
> in their pseudo-pagemaker language).

Try opening the Prep file as a text file, and reading it.

					Bart Massey
					..tektronix!reed!bart