SUMMARY postscript level II and newsprint

From: paul@hydres.uucp
Date: Tue Mar 09 1993 - 18:23:40 CST


My original problems appears to stem from word perfect printing to
postscript printer on the network, via pc-nfs - newsprint is involved too
The replies:

Hi Paul,

We had that problem here too. The problem, as I recall, is that WP PS
files don't conform to the DSC (Document Structuring Conventions)
specified by PS Level 2. NP expects DSC-conforming documents. There's
nothing wrong with NP, the problem is with WP. NP requires DSC to break
pages so it can reverse page order, etc. Also, all the PS viewers on
Sun use DSC to navigate. Without DSC, a PS document renders onto a
single page (of trash) using pageview(1).

I wrote a filter to parse WP PS files, and add the necessary DSC lines
so that the WP file will be acceptable to NP. This filter, it should be
noted, is WP-postcript specific. We plug the filter into the filter
chain for the printer so WP documents get fixed on the way through.
Since all our WP printers are managed by an SCO Unix system this is
possible. The SCO lp command filters the file, and then sends it (via
remsh) to the Sun for printing using lpr. You may be able to figure out
how to plug the script into the PC-NFS print chain.

Script is sent as a mail attachment, since some of the regular
expressions may contain TAB characters which might disappear if I
merely copy the script into this message. If you have problems
unbundling it, let me know, and we can figure out some other way to get
the file to you. Don't try to launch the attachment from the mail to
look at it, its a shell script. -- Copy it out.

Hope this helps.
-Terry
_____________________________________________________________________

  Terry Rosenbaum E-mail: tlr@radiology.msu.edu
  Michigan State University Phone: 517/355-0120
  Radiology Department Fax: 517/336-2849
  B-220 Clinical Center
  138 Service Rd
  East Lansing MI 48824-1315 USA
_____________________________________________________________________
[ I have the script if anyone want it... PAUL]

Actually, Level II has more to it than that - there are new operators,
forms support, and most likely applicable here, garbage collection on which
some PS output programs now rely.

If I may, we just did a 90 ppm printer project using a UK product called
Jaws from a company called 5D Solutions. It is a level II interpreter
that knows about NewsPrint, SPARCPrinters, and HP printers. I would
suggest you send them mail.

I don't know if they are still interested in the retail market, but it
is a very good, very fast interpreter.

                l & h,
                kev

Kevin Sheehan kevin%ups.uucp@fourx.Aus.Sun.COM |
Uniq Professional Services Pty Ltd ACN 056 279 335 | Why Not?
PO Box 70, Paddington, NSW 2021, (Sydney) Australia |
Phone: +61-2-360-7434 Fax: +61-2-331-2572 |

Info:

Ian D. Kemmish Tel. +44 767 601 361
18 Durham Close uad1077@dircon.co.uk
Biggleswade uknet!dircon!uad1077
Beds SG18 8HZ United Kingdom

e had problems a few years ago with WordPerfect Postscript
documents on Sun-3 printers with transcript software.
The solution was to remove an extraneous Control-D ^D
"end of print job" character in one of the WordPerfect
Postscript "preamble" files attached to any output document.

If this WP driver is using the Document Structuring conventions
correctly, the Level 2 jobs will contain either

    %%LanguageLevel: 2

or a

    %%Extensions:

comment specifying which specific feature is needed.

Possibly you could set up an accounting filter to reject such jobs.

Many thanks to all those who helped I am going to attack WP !!!

Paul Humphreys ( Postmaster ) paul@hydres.uucp
HR Wallingford paul%hydres.uucp@uknet.ac.uk
Howbery Park
Wallingford Tel: 0491-35381 X2292
Oxon Fax: 0491-32233
OX10-8BA



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