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[Postscript] Emitting Postscript from REBOL

Geomol
7-Apr-2006
[351x4]
If setcm is used, then switchy has to come first.
It seems like, it isn't aligned right though.
Needs to be moved up.
Well, that's it for today. Good night!
Henrik
7-Apr-2006
[355x3]
night
http://www.hmkdesign.dk/ps2.jpg
that's it for me too... night
Louis
8-Apr-2006
[358]
Henrik, are you going to develope your ean13.r any further so that 
everything is there and saves to a file?   


http://www.isbn-international.org/en/download/implementation-guidelines-04.pdf
Geomol
8-Apr-2006
[359]
Hey, cool PostScript pic, Henrik! :-)
Graham
8-Apr-2006
[360x5]
mapping colours from rebol to postscript.
0 0 0 => black 0.0.0
1 1 1 => white 255.255.255
view-ps-color: func [ color [tuple!]][ return reduce [ color/1 / 
255 color/2 / 255 color/3 / 255 ]]
don't know how a ps engine will cope with this

>> view-ps-color orange
== [1 0.588235294117647 3.92156862745098E-2]
seems to have no problems with this format.
Geomol
8-Apr-2006
[365x3]
Thanks!
New version! PostScript is default set to DeviceGray with no colours. 
To set it to DeviceRGB, I made a command in the dialect for that. 
Try:
do http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/postscript/postscript.r

write %test.ps postscript [DeviceRGB page [switchy linewidth 5 path 
[setcolor 255.0.0 line 50x50 50x100 setcolor 0.255.0 line 50x100 
100x100 setcolor 0.0.255 line 100x100 100x50 setcolor 255.0.255 line 
100x50 50x50]]]
Another example:

write %test.ps postscript [page [font [Times-Roman 40] linewidth 
0 path [at 72x720 "REBOL PostScript Dialect"] path [line 72x716 520x716] 
font [Times-Roman 16] path [at 96x680 "With this dialect it's possible 
to easily produce PostScript output."] font [Helvetica-Oblique 12] 
[at 72x72 "PostScript is copyright Adobe."]]]
Henrik
8-Apr-2006
[368x2]
louis, the one on rebol.org seems to be a bit old. the one I have 
locally can generate bitmaps as image! in 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x size 
and vectors for PDF Maker. it can generate an EAN13 code with the 
correct checksum. it doesn't save to file, but it's only a couple 
of lines of code to do that
now I'm thinking about making postscript output for it
Geomol
8-Apr-2006
[370x4]
Example with different fonts:

write %test.ps postscript [[font [Verdana 20][at 72x700 "Verdana"] 
font [Helvetica 20] [at 72x650 "Helvetica"] font [Times-Roman 20] 
[at 72x600 "Times"]]]

I guess, it looks at the fonts installed on the system. I'm not sure, 
how 'clever' it is to guess the names.
It seems, that Times has to be named "Times-Roman". Here on my Mac, 
I have "Times" and "Times New Roman" installed, so I'm a bit confused.
Other valid fontnames: Times-Bold, Times-Italic, Times-BoldItalic
It's possible to use all different kinds of fonts. On my Mac, I have 
e.g. Papyrus, and combining fontnames with -Bold, -Italic and -BoldItalic 
is ok.
Anton
8-Apr-2006
[374]
Fantastic work guys!
Graham, perhaps a better name for view-ps-color is to-ps-color.
[unknown: 9]
8-Apr-2006
[375x2]
Yeah, in QML we ran into the same font problem.  So what we did was 
make Times, Helv, and Courier forced to be the defaults, then allowed 
any font name to be called as bassed to a variable as the real name 
of the font.  On windows you can have font names with spaces "Times 
New Roman" for example.  By have the top three just be one simple 
word everyone can remember I figured it would make people happy.
bassed = passed
Louis
8-Apr-2006
[377x2]
Henrik, are you sharing that new ean13.r file? If so, do you have 
a link?
The link in the old file doesn't work.
[unknown: 9]
8-Apr-2006
[379]
Also, let me confirm something, can I take any existiing PS file, 
and simply pass it to this, and it will render it?
Geomol
8-Apr-2006
[380x4]
Well, the dialect doesn't take PS as input, it produces PS. A PS 
file can be printed from REBOL in a way, Graham showed. Like:
>> port: open/direct tcp://192.168.1.253:9100
>> insert port read %boys-0-36-length-weight.ps
>> close port


192.168.1.253 is the IP of the printer, 9100 is the port, where the 
printer get data.
The dialect, I'm developing here, is for making it easier to produce 
PostScript output from within REBOL. Next step is to make a converter 
from the DRAW dialect to PostScript, so any DRAW data can be printed.
And now I'm at it, learning a bit PS and all, it'll make sense for 
me to make PS output from my NicomDoc format.
Reichart, the thing, you're asking, is taking a PS-file as input 
and render it, like GhostView does. It'll take a bit more work to 
parse PS-files, but it's not impossible. I have no intension doing 
that for now though.
[unknown: 9]
8-Apr-2006
[384]
Got it..............cool.
Henrik
8-Apr-2006
[385]
reichart, on your mac, Preview.app eats PS files for breakfast, in 
case you want to try that
Graham
8-Apr-2006
[386]
John, postscript uses a number of defined fonts.  Ignore the fonts 
on your system. The ones important are the ones in your postscript 
printer.
Henrik
8-Apr-2006
[387]
louis, check out http://www.hmkdesign.dk/rebol/barcode/

There are no docs, but I hope the demos are a bit explanatory
[unknown: 9]
8-Apr-2006
[388]
Henrik, thanks, I will play with it.  I have this great Mac sitting 
on my desk, but I don't seem to use it enough.


NOTE: I'm still tied to my PC, and TRYING to get away....so far it 
seems I'm held to just a couple of issues....I have not had time 
to write up the "PC MAC LINUX" chart I want so I can figure out what 
it takes for me to move over.  But the first big one is still a thumbnailer. 
 I use ThumbPlus.  If they were on Mac and Linux, then I think the 
move would be a lot better.  I use this about 10 times every day. 
 We can move this chat if you want to engage me on the Mac issue.
Graham
9-Apr-2006
[389x6]
John, just reading that link you gave to a postscript document structure, 
and I think we should change the prolog to say 
%!
instead of
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
as the latter says that the document is fully conforming.
The prolog is quite important to allow document managers to manage 
the postscript file properly.

It was interesting to note that postscript file managers can pull 
out the colour graphic pages and send them to be printed on colour 
lasers, and let the rest be printed on the monochrome lasers.
.. meant document print manager.
Looks like we need to terminate the document with a comment
%%EOF
the point of writing conforming postscript is that a manager might 
take that document and print it 2 or 4 up or whatever.
Looks like images can be incorporated into the ps file as hex data.
Geomol
9-Apr-2006
[395]
Graham, thanks for the info. I'll deal with these things in one of 
the following days.
Graham
10-Apr-2006
[396x3]
Just wondering whether it is preferable to build the dialect so that
postscript-dialect => postscript, or => draw

rather than trying to write a parser that converts draw to postscript.
I think the most common scenario for those of us wanting to do printing 
is to to compose a page, preview it and then print it.  This way, 
we have the one dialect that covers both bases.
the draw dialect is too low level I think for this.
[unknown: 9]
10-Apr-2006
[399x2]
Intersting...
So many dialects needed.