Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!chinet!les From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: PS libraries Message-ID: <8349@chinet.chi.il.us> Date: 3 May 89 23:08:45 GMT References: <2994@daisy.UUCP> <775@adobe.UUCP> <8751@polya.Stanford.EDU> <783@adobe.UUCP> <98@snll-arpagw.UUCP> <109@snll-arpagw.UUCP> <809@adobe.UUCP> Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix Lines: 34 In article <809@adobe.UUCP> greid@adobe.COM (Glenn Reid) writes: >When you write a PostScript language program to a file, there are only >three likely uses of it, in my opinion: > 1. The user wants to drag the file to another system for > printing, or mail it to his friend, or otherwise export > the file. > 2. The user wants to paste it into another application as > an illustration (EPS file). > 3. The user is a hacker and wants to hack and look at PS. > >In cases 1 and 2 above, you don't want ^D in the file. And if all you >want to do is to print it on your dedicated printer, a three-line >script will do it. Or you can COPY PSEOF.TXT yourself, since you >typically have 30 seconds before you timeout. >Sigh. I wish this weren't such a problem. Why aren't the things that actually handle postscript intelligently (i.e. print spoolers and programs that include EPS into a larger postscript entity) smart enough to delete the embedded ^D put out at the end of a file by ordinary applications. If the postscript in question is in a file, it's pretty easy to see that the ^D is the last character and delete it when it is not appropriate. Even if the data comes from a pipe it only takes one character of read-ahead to detect it. Am I missing something here? Is there any case where a ^D at the end of a file would mean something other than EOF in postscript? Making PS-aware programs deal with this would allow "dumb" programs/drivers to work with the embedded ^D. Les Mikesell