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PostScript is an amazing programming language, and this language reference manual is one of the greatest technical documentations I have ever seen, I highly rec

by triska 6y ago

PostScript is an amazing programming language, and this language reference manual is one of the greatest technical documentations I have ever seen, I highly recommend it! One of the few mistakes I found is on page 700, where the snippet (apparently accidentally copied from the documentation of fill on page 589): gsave fill grestore should be replaced by: gsave stroke grestore PostScript allows very concise and elegant programs, ideal to visualize information in readable and scalable ways. Also check out Display Postscript for inspiration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript Rest in peace Charles Geschke, and thank you and your colleagues for PostScript!

kenniskrag 6y ago
why does the fonts looks weird on ps documents compared to pdf?
- triska 6y ago
  This highly depends on the software you use and how you generate PostScript files. To program with PostScript, and to display and print PostScript documents, I highly recommend Ghostscript, a PostScript interpreter: https://www.ghostscript.com/ https://www.ghostscript.com/ It is available on several platforms and can show the graphical output using windowing systems such as X11. Please see the project's documentation for more information, and consider filing an issue if it behaves in unexpected ways. The IRC channel #ghostscript on Freenode, and the newsgroup comp.lang.postscript are also good resources to learn more about PostScript and to ask questions. One interesting fact about PostScript fonts is that fonts are encoded in the same language as entire documents! This shows how versatile and general PostScript is. Here is more information about PostScript fonts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts PostScript defines a set of fonts that must be supported by conforming interpreters, the so called Core Font Set: https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/PL3corefont.pdf https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/PL3corefont.pdf
- svat 6y ago
  Just a guess, but you may have in mind certain PS files generated by TeX/LaTeX from the 80s and 90s, back in the day when both PS-based workflows and raster (bitmap) fonts were more common than they are today. So, although it's not really a limitation of PostScript, for purely historical reasons there may be a correlation among academic documents between PS files and raster fonts, which (because of a lack of hinting) look worse on the screen, at resolutions other than the one they were tuned for. For such documents (try this if you have one of them), there is the amazing pkfix tool by Heiko Oberdiek: I had once written a blog post about this (https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/converting-old-ps-files https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/converting-old-p...) but you can read the TeX FAQ (http://www.texfaq.org/FAQ-pkfix http://www.texfaq.org/FAQ-pkfix) or even Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pkfix&oldid=712506547 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pkfix&oldid=71250...) or see it in action in this answer by the author: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/120260/making-low-quality-pdf-files-clearer/120273#120273 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/120260/making-low-qu...
- hnick 6y ago
  Really depends on the file, the font format, and viewing program (if you aren't talking about printing). Printed PS can look fine, and is still used in some industries for essential mail. Viewing programs are usually the poorer cousin of PDF viewers, presumably because PDF is much more easily parsed. PDF files tend to use TrueType fonts more, while PS might be using Type1, but that shouldn't matter much.
aduitsis 6y ago
I remember Sun Solaris workstations where the Display PostScript logo was visible when the X server was starting!
WCSTombs 6y ago
PostScript was one of the first two languages I took up pretty seriously (C being the other one) and helped get me into programming in general. I quickly fell in love with the elegant syntax and intuitive graphical capabilities. Sadly, I found PostScript itself not to be very convenient for general-purpose programming just due to the limited set of primitives available in the standard library, but as a special-purpose language, I got a lot of mileage out of it.
techdragon 6y ago
I have a copy of the 2nd edition Red Book PostScript reference manual and the section on Display PostScript always fascinated me, I really wish there was a good way to give it a shot but by the time I really got into it, it was already falling too far behind to remain compatible with anything I could readily get my hands on.

by triska 6y ago

kenniskrag 6y ago

why does the fonts looks weird on ps documents compared to pdf?

triska 6y ago
This highly depends on the software you use and how you generate PostScript files. To program with PostScript, and to display and print PostScript documents, I highly recommend Ghostscript, a PostScript interpreter: https://www.ghostscript.com/ https://www.ghostscript.com/ It is available on several platforms and can show the graphical output using windowing systems such as X11. Please see the project's documentation for more information, and consider filing an issue if it behaves in unexpected ways. The IRC channel #ghostscript on Freenode, and the newsgroup comp.lang.postscript are also good resources to learn more about PostScript and to ask questions. One interesting fact about PostScript fonts is that fonts are encoded in the same language as entire documents! This shows how versatile and general PostScript is. Here is more information about PostScript fonts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts PostScript defines a set of fonts that must be supported by conforming interpreters, the so called Core Font Set: https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/PL3corefont.pdf https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/PL3corefont.pdf
svat 6y ago
Just a guess, but you may have in mind certain PS files generated by TeX/LaTeX from the 80s and 90s, back in the day when both PS-based workflows and raster (bitmap) fonts were more common than they are today. So, although it's not really a limitation of PostScript, for purely historical reasons there may be a correlation among academic documents between PS files and raster fonts, which (because of a lack of hinting) look worse on the screen, at resolutions other than the one they were tuned for. For such documents (try this if you have one of them), there is the amazing pkfix tool by Heiko Oberdiek: I had once written a blog post about this (https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/converting-old-ps-files https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/converting-old-p...) but you can read the TeX FAQ (http://www.texfaq.org/FAQ-pkfix http://www.texfaq.org/FAQ-pkfix) or even Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pkfix&oldid=712506547 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pkfix&oldid=71250...) or see it in action in this answer by the author: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/120260/making-low-quality-pdf-files-clearer/120273#120273 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/120260/making-low-qu...
hnick 6y ago
Really depends on the file, the font format, and viewing program (if you aren't talking about printing). Printed PS can look fine, and is still used in some industries for essential mail. Viewing programs are usually the poorer cousin of PDF viewers, presumably because PDF is much more easily parsed. PDF files tend to use TrueType fonts more, while PS might be using Type1, but that shouldn't matter much.

aduitsis 6y ago

I remember Sun Solaris workstations where the Display PostScript logo was visible when the X server was starting!

WCSTombs 6y ago

PostScript was one of the first two languages I took up pretty seriously (C being the other one) and helped get me into programming in general. I quickly fell in love with the elegant syntax and intuitive graphical capabilities. Sadly, I found PostScript itself not to be very convenient for general-purpose programming just due to the limited set of primitives available in the standard library, but as a special-purpose language, I got a lot of mileage out of it.

techdragon 6y ago

I have a copy of the 2nd edition Red Book PostScript reference manual and the section on Display PostScript always fascinated me, I really wish there was a good way to give it a shot but by the time I really got into it, it was already falling too far behind to remain compatible with anything I could readily get my hands on.