Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!microsoft!georgem From: georgem@microsoft.UUCP (George Moore) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Creating Postscript file Keywords: Postscript, Laserwriter Message-ID: <7391@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 89 01:58:10 GMT References: <15022@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> Reply-To: georgem@microsoft.UUCP (George Moore) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 35 In articleChang.P.Woo@dartmouth.edu (Chang P. Woo) writes: > >Does that mean that I should send the Postscript file with headers? >[...] Since all laserwriters available for use around here are Apple's >Laserwriters, I don't know what to do exactly. Yes. If you are going to be saving the PostScript from the Mac for later printing on a non-Appletalk (and non-initialized) LaserWriter, you must save the LaserPrep header. When the Print Manager in your Mac starts to generate the PostScript, it interrogates the target LaserWriter's PostScript interpreter to see if the LaserPrep has been downloaded already, and if it has, if it is the right version. This LaserPrep header contains PostScript subroutine "shortcuts" for the Mac to use while printing, in order to save download and interpretation time. Like defining "bd" to "bind def" and things like that. Makes for very compact, if human unfriendly, output. BTW, my hat is off to the Apple engineer(s) who wrote LaserPrep -- several hundred lines of elegant PostScript code with beautiful stack management/manipulation. ANYWAY, when your Mac produces this PostScript dump, it assumes the LaserPrep has already been downloaded. If not, your dump will die if fed to a non-initialized PostScript device. The thing to remember is: Dump with header? Previously initialized printer? Output? Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Just think of it as an XOR operation. :-) -George Moore (georgem@microsoft.COM)