Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:25169 comp.sys.mac.programmer:3900 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!masticol From: masticol@paul.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Product idea (Apple, Claris, and independents, please note!) Keywords: since so many people want and need it... Message-ID: Date: 15 Jan 89 17:57:32 GMT Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 32 About once a week, I've seen someone asking how to get Mac postscript files to Unix, presumably to include in LaTeX or similar documents. I've been one of those people, and after 2 months of (intermittent) effort, the problem basically remains unsolved. Two local Mac and Postscript gurus (hi, Tara! hi, Rocky!) have also attacked this problem without success. As I understand it, there's really no trouble getting the Postscript files to Unix or including them in a document using dvi2ps. The problem is in the Mac Postscript header file, which forces the printer to use absolute addressing. This precludes moving or scaling the image, so it always takes up an entire page in the document and leaves the Postscript cursor in an unknown position. The header also has to be hacked to avoid incompatibility problems with some printers. (Please follow-up if I'm wrong about this.) Apple isn't likely to fix the problem with the Postscript header themselves, even though it would make their product more generally usable. What, then, would it take to write a translation utility to convert (at a minimum) Pict and Tiff images directly to relative-addressed, scalable Postscript? If the LaserWriter driver can't do the job right, bypass it! I would certainly pay for such a product, and I'm sure that many others would too. Especially if the developers were able to guarantee that Adobe Postscript standards and Mac image file formats would be scrupulously supported and updates would be regularly available. Just a thought. - Steve (masticol@paul.rutgers.edu)