| | | Hacking PostScript |
Ordinarily, PostScript is written by a computer program, and
humans rarely need to code PostScript by hand. However, if you want to know the elements
of how the PostScript language works, you may consult Peter J.
Weingartner's First
Guide To PostScript.
Also available on the World-Wide Web are links to PostScript
resources
and the FAQ list
from the newsgroup
comp.lang.postscript.
Here is an example of a simple hand-coded PostScript file.
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 135 110
/Helvetica findfont 60 scalefont setfont
/print696 {0 0 moveto (696) show} def
.90 -.03 .10
{dup 1 exch sub 0 setrgbcolor print696
2 .5 translate 1 rotate } for
0 0 1.0 setrgbcolor print696
showpage
If you want to do general hacking of existing PostScript files, then you can try the PSUtils package. It can select and rearrange pages, alter the document paper size, put multiple pages on a single physical sheet of paper, and so forth.
If you have a non-PostScript printer at home, you may think that you cannot print PostScript files. Surprisingly, it is actually possible to print PostScript files on virtually any printer by using the program Ghostscript.
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | Hacking PostScript |