Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!purdue!decwrl!hannah.dec.com!batcheldern
From: batcheldern@hannah.dec.com (Ned Batchelder, PostScript Eng.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: ^D embedded in PS files
Message-ID: <8905051356.AA01321@decwrl.dec.com>
Date: 5 May 89 13:56:16 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 19

In article <7207@pogo.WV.TEK.COM>, richk@pogo.WV.TEK.COM (Richard G.
Knowles) states that the Unix spooler is "brain-dead" because it cares
about ^D.

How should a spooler detect the end of the job?  The entire reason the ^D
is echoed is for a spooler to be able to detect the end of the job.  ^D's
are the provence of the spooler ENTIRELY.  THEY DO NOT BELONG IN FILES.
THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE POSTSCRIPT LANGUAGE.  PERIOD.  To anyone who
believes ^D is part of the PostScript language:  Show me where in the
red book it says that it is.

If no files contained ^D, and all spoolers used them, as was intended,
everything would be fine.  Richard states that the reason he likes ^D at
the beginning of a file is so that if the last file didn't end with one,
then everything is ok.  The correct solution to the problem is for your
printing software to use whatever signal is appropriate for end-of-file (it
may not be ^D) at the end of every job. Then everything will really be fine.

--Ned Batchelder, Digital Equipment Corp, BatchelderN@Hannah.DEC.com