REQ Simple definition/explanation of 'postscript'?

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geezer

Can someone give me a simple description (or definition) of what
'postscript' is? What it does for you? Why used? Software?
Hardware? Both?

Thanks
 
Can someone give me a simple description (or definition) of what
'postscript' is? What it does for you? Why used? Software?
Hardware? Both?
Click to expand...

According to "PostScript Language Tutorial and cookbook" by Adobe
Systems Incorporated 16th printing jul 1990

"The POSTSCRIPT language is a programming language designed to convey a
description of virtually any desired page to a printer. It possesses a
wide range of graphic operators that may be combined in any manner. It
contains variables and allows the combining of operators into more
complex procedures and functions."

For example (also from same reference)
"/Times-Roman findfont
15 scalefont
setfont
72 200 moveto
(typography) show
showpage"

This will cause a page to be printed with the word typography 72 points
down (iirc) and 200 points right from the upper left edge of the page
in 15 point times-roman font.

This is rather a technical explanation... here is a simple one.

What is postscript?
It's a language common to printers.

What it does for you?
For your average user... it's a standard for printers, been a standard
for over 15 years. You can buy a printer that supports postscript with
assurance that what you buy will work with some pretty old shit like a
20 year old mac, or tomorrows shit. If you had a postscript printer,
you could buy the newest version of windows (xp-64) with assurance that
it will work. Users still using DOS programs might consider a
postscript printer or one that emulates an HP.

Why is it used?
Many reasons. High end graphics typicaly uses postscript. In the
olden days you could get away with owning a very shitty computer, or
even terminal (glorified typewriter) and so long as you knew the
language you could create very complex jobs. It's hard to understand
in this day and age of megabytes of memory and gigabyes of hard drive
but simply put you could not 20 years ago take a 8megapixle image and
edit it. Today no big deal, that's 1 megabyte of data assuming black
and white but back then this was a bigger deal. But you could draw an
image with lines and have these lines be drawn on paper at 300dpi.
Drawing a line from point a 4 inches to point b is a simple thing, more
simple than 1200 dots. But the biggest benifit was creating a standard
among pritners. You didn't have to design drivers for different
computers if bought a license for postscript. It in the most simple
terms was a common language.

Is it software or hardware?
This is a hard question to answer because most people think of hardware
as something physical you buy that you can touch does mechancial stuff.
Imagine an old game machine like an atari that took cartridges. The
cartridge had software on it. Some printers offered a postscript
cartridge back in the early 1990s. Postscript is an interpreted
program language so in this sense it's software. If you were to think
of your printer as a computer and the paper as the screen it's easier
to understand that postscript is software. It's something that HP for
example can license from Adobe for example that they shove in their
printers and sell to you, so can Brother, Konika-Minolta, Canon...
whoever. There is postscript software emulation that basicly acts as
if you had a postscript printer. This is handy if you have a stupid
printer but your software needs postscript. Very popular standard for
color matching.
 
According to "PostScript Language Tutorial and cookbook" by Adobe
Systems Incorporated 16th printing jul 1990

"The POSTSCRIPT language is a programming language designed to convey a
description of virtually any desired page to a printer. It possesses a
wide range of graphic operators that may be combined in any manner. It
contains variables and allows the combining of operators into more
complex procedures and functions."

For example (also from same reference)
"/Times-Roman findfont
15 scalefont
setfont
72 200 moveto
(typography) show
showpage"

This will cause a page to be printed with the word typography 72 points
down (iirc) and 200 points right from the upper left edge of the page
in 15 point times-roman font.

This is rather a technical explanation... here is a simple one.

What is postscript?
It's a language common to printers.

What it does for you?
For your average user... it's a standard for printers, been a standard
for over 15 years. You can buy a printer that supports postscript with
assurance that what you buy will work with some pretty old shit like a
20 year old mac, or tomorrows shit. If you had a postscript printer,
you could buy the newest version of windows (xp-64) with assurance that
it will work. Users still using DOS programs might consider a
postscript printer or one that emulates an HP.

Why is it used?
Many reasons. High end graphics typicaly uses postscript. In the
olden days you could get away with owning a very shitty computer, or
even terminal (glorified typewriter) and so long as you knew the
language you could create very complex jobs. It's hard to understand
in this day and age of megabytes of memory and gigabyes of hard drive
but simply put you could not 20 years ago take a 8megapixle image and
edit it. Today no big deal, that's 1 megabyte of data assuming black
and white but back then this was a bigger deal. But you could draw an
image with lines and have these lines be drawn on paper at 300dpi.
Drawing a line from point a 4 inches to point b is a simple thing, more
simple than 1200 dots. But the biggest benifit was creating a standard
among pritners. You didn't have to design drivers for different
computers if bought a license for postscript. It in the most simple
terms was a common language.

Is it software or hardware?
This is a hard question to answer because most people think of hardware
as something physical you buy that you can touch does mechancial stuff.
Imagine an old game machine like an atari that took cartridges. The
cartridge had software on it. Some printers offered a postscript
cartridge back in the early 1990s. Postscript is an interpreted
program language so in this sense it's software. If you were to think
of your printer as a computer and the paper as the screen it's easier
to understand that postscript is software. It's something that HP for
example can license from Adobe for example that they shove in their
printers and sell to you, so can Brother, Konika-Minolta, Canon...
whoever. There is postscript software emulation that basicly acts as
if you had a postscript printer. This is handy if you have a stupid
printer but your software needs postscript. Very popular standard for
color matching.
Click to expand...


THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
 
It's a language common to printers.
It is also a good example of the thought
processes of programmers. Given the difficulty
of printing the same document on different
printers, someone apparently realized that
the problem in display could be solved by
yet another new programming language,
so that the document is a just another
program,

There may have been a precedent in this when
either DEC or the UNIX people (or both) came up with the
idea of a Virtual Terminal that can be mapped
to either a VT10, a VT52, a VT100, or any
number of terminals. With this concept one
wrote editors for the Virtual Terminal and
let the local translators do the hard work --
remember "raw" versus "cooked"?

john slimick
(e-mail address removed)
 
This is a newbie's question.
In order print a fancy booklet using postscript printer, I must create a
document which is compatible with postscript printers. What program(s)
should I use to create a document file? I assume that Microsoft word doc
files won't work for postscript printer. Please enlighten me. Craig
 
This is a newbie's question.
In order print a fancy booklet using postscript printer, I must create a
document which is compatible with postscript printers. What program(s)
should I use to create a document file? I assume that Microsoft word doc
files won't work for postscript printer. Please enlighten me.
Click to expand...

Use anything you like. Windows can use any printer it has a driver
for, so it's not an issue using Microsoft Word. Think of it this
way.... when you print a word document it converts it to a postscript
document which in turn is sent to the printer. There are programs that
can think in terms of postscript and offer their own benifits, but
generally speaking you would use it just like you would any other
printer.
 
Use anything you like. Windows can use any printer it has a driver
for, so it's not an issue using Microsoft Word. Think of it this
way.... when you print a word document it converts it to a postscript
document which in turn is sent to the printer. There are programs that
can think in terms of postscript and offer their own benifits, but
generally speaking you would use it just like you would any other
printer.
Click to expand...

Test the above advice on a small test document first. In some cases
you get the raw postscript page description/layout in text form, and
you can get a few hundred pages of text as output. It only works if
the postscript drivers work.
 
Narusato said:
This is a newbie's question.
In order print a fancy booklet using postscript printer, I must create a
document which is compatible with postscript printers. What program(s)
should I use to create a document file? I assume that Microsoft word doc
files won't work for postscript printer. Please enlighten me. Craig
Click to expand...

It will work (subject to the print driver). OK, you have a document in
Word (or preferably OpenOffice.org!) which is in a setup that the
computer can make a displayable version of it on the screen. Your
printer wants a version of the document that it can understand for
printing purposes. So the printer for printing uses a different language
to the computer for displaying. Your printer comes with a printer
driver that turns the Word file into something the printer can
understand. Different printers use different languages, generally
speaking printers that 'speak' postscript tend to be more professionally
geared than those that don't. For a 'newbie' then as long as you have
installed the appropriate printer driver you should be able to just File
and Print from Word as per normal.

If you are trying to do clever things with the pages for a booklet, the
printer driver may help you, or you may have to work it out manually, or
get a third party prog (eg fineprint (I think)) which allows for cunning
options such as printing in a funny order and several pages on one sheet
and the like.
 
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