Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!texbell!uudell!natinst!rpp386!woody
From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Printer state between pages
Summary: printer states
Message-ID: <17604@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 9 Jan 90 12:52:00 GMT
References: <1990Jan8.195614.27489@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Plano, TX
Lines: 22

In article <1990Jan8.195614.27489@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes:
> I claim this is incorrect, and indeed these programs
> should look at not the original state, or the state between pages,
> but the changes between the two...... 
I would agree with this, but the state is fairly complex, and not easily
gotten to. 
> 
> the 2-up program needs to store away the initial state somewhere.
> Then, after setup, it needs to divide the new state by the initial
> state, and save this information away for its later use.  Each
> `transformation' it wants to make must then be divided by this
> new matrix we created before it is applied.

The gsave /grestore context saves a lot more that just the CTM.  It also
saves the current path, positions, etc,etc.  There is no composite "state"
object that one could assign.  It would be really handy to have one.  It
should be added, and gsave should place a composite object somewhere that you
could then define a variable to contain.  It, however cannot be "divided".
Only the matrix can be divided.  It makes little sense to think about
dividing the path.....
cheers
Woody