Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!xanth!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!munnari!basser!jaa
From: jaa@basser.oz (James Ashton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: How to access the VM image in a PostScript printer
Message-ID: <1657@basser.oz>
Date: 6 Dec 88 13:15:03 GMT
References: <4337@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Sender: msgs@basser.oz
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 19

In article <4337@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> kjk@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Ken Keirnan) writes:
>There is a commercial product available for the Macintosh that can
>send a PostScript file to the printer and capture the bit image from
>the printer.  Is this capability unique to the Apple LaserWriter or
>can this be done with any PostScript printer?  I'm not interested in
>the Mac product but in the mechanism for capturing the bit image.
>Anyone know?

I think you'll find that Apple made very sure that this sort of thing
was extremely difficult to do (read impossible using postscript) and
that Adobe and indirectly the copyright holders on the fonts used would
have made sure of this also.  Otherwise any fool could get in and get
bitmap copies of all the copyrighted fonts at any size.  This would be
bad for Apple but very good for us.  In this vein, if by some miracle
you have found a way (read extremely unlikely bug in the PostScript
implementation) to do this:  please PLEASE tell me now so I can make
a fortune pirating fonts.

					James Ashton.