Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!lll-tis!dgis!jkrueger
From: jkrueger@dgis.UUCP (Jonathan Krueger)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: saving Mac-generated postscript and printing it to Laserwriters
Keywords: postscript macintosh compatible standard
Message-ID: <304@dgis.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 88 20:20:43 GMT
Organization: Defense Applied Information Technology Center, Alexandria VA
Lines: 37

Has anyone tried this?  I want to save postscript from a Mac
application and print it on an Apple laserwriter that's connected to a
Unix host.  Seems like it oughta work, but it doesn't.

What I've done: the application is MacDraw.  I run it, open the
document, start a print to the laserwriter, then type command-k's like
mad.  The driver saves the postscript to a file named PostScript in the
folder that MacDraw is executing from.  I use NSCA software over
Kinetics hardware to transfer the file to the Unix host.  It arrives as
almost an ordinary text file; it has some characters from the extended
character set.  I noticed the copywrite symbol near the top, a
control-d at the end, and a few others in the middle which Unix
sees as bytes with the high bit set.  But otherwise it looks like
ordinary printable postscript representing my Macdrawing.

The Apple laserwriter is connected to the Unix host using Adobe
Transcript software and the Berkeley print spooling system.  When I lpr
the file, it ends up listing the Postscript code, not interpreting it.
If I add the header line:
	%!PS-Adobe-1.0
(as Adobe's "enscript" generates) and lpr the file, nothing at all
prints.  The printer sits there and flashes its yellow light for a
while, then the normal header page prints, but no output from the
file, no drawing, nothing.

The Mac is a Mac Plus, finder 5.3, 1024K, if that helps.  The postscript
is too large to post, but I'll gladly mail it to anyone interested.

So, has anyone succeeded in printing Mac-generated postscript on
postscript engines attached to Unix hosts as ordinary print devices?
Is the Adobe software interfering, should I just cat it to /dev/lw?  Do
I need to perform a few edits on the postscript to remove appletalk or
Mac laserwriter driver communications and leave in page description
stuff?  Does anyone out there do this all the time?  Any ideas,
suggestions, pointers, etc. are welcome and appreciated.

-- Jon Krueger