V10/cmd/postscript/VERSION
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Version 3.3.1 5/20/91
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1: buildtables stuff has been cleaned up and is now a user level command.
Uses shell.lib files that are installed with font tables. The devpost
tables were built on a version 47.0 PS-810. The devLatin1 tables were
built on a version 51.7 PS-820.
2: The devLatin1 tables provide support for the ISO Latin1 alphabet on
PostScript printers.
3: All translators support different text font encoding schemes using the
-E option and *.enc files installed in POSTLIB. The ISO Latin 1 alphabet
is supported with file /usr/lib/postscript/Latin1.enc.
4: printfont prints a table of the available (encoded) characters in one
or more PostScript fonts. It also understands the -E option.
5: grabit and hardcopy are two new programs that may be of interest to the
more serious PostScript programmer. grabit resembles ==, but produces
output that's usally easier to read. hardcopy redirects output from
PostScript file output operators (or procedures) to paper. It's useful
if you don't have direct access to a printer.
6: Prologues and programs are stored together. Other common PostScript files
are now in the psfiles directory.
7: Changed $(@F) in the DWB 3.2 makefiles to `basename $@`. $(@F) didn't work
properly on research systems??
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Verions 3.3 4/16/90
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1: The package is now included in DWB. Version numbers are a bit misleading.
The one in postscript.mk refers to the DWB package.
2: dpost (and troff) now read ASCII font tables. makedev and the old binary
format are gone.
3: The devpost directory came directly from the DWB package. The font tables
originally distributed with this package are in directory devopost. They
are not installed. If possible we recommend you use the devpost tables.
The old tables can be installed by adding devopost to the TARGETS list in
file postscript.mk.
4: dpost recognizes two new fields in font tables. Entries for the full
PostScript font look like,
fontname Times-Roman
The fontname field is helps manage host resident fonts, the DocumentFonts
comment, and is used to define font name abbreviations like the ones in
dpost.ps. A font table entry that looks like,
named in prologue
disables the runtime abbreviation for the font - dpost assumes it's already
in the prologue.
5: Extra font tables included in DWB 3.0's devpost font collection are in
directory devpost.add. They included here, but should probably not be
used.
6: Bracket building has been fixed and tested on a wide range of PostScript
printers. It will likely still not work on many clones. Real problem
appears to be with Adobe's braceleftbt character.
7: Most of the special tuning code for device emulation has been removed.
Emulation still works, but there may be cases where it's not as good as
earlier versions.
8: Several problems with color and reverse video printing have been fixed.
9: buildtables directory has been cleanup up. The template files in directory
buildtables/devpost.data were used to build the devpost tables.
10: postplot and download are two new programs. postplot is for the System V
plot package only. Both were written for the Unix 4.0 lp package.
11: postgif is also relatively new - it came from Chi Choy.
12: The translators now rotate clockwise when printing in landscape mode. If
you want the old behavior set ROTATION to -1 in postscript.mk.
13: forms.ps has been cleaned up some. Better behavior when you print 2
landscape pages on one sheet.
14: Handling of Datakit code for System V has been changed some. Makefiles
now expect to find libdk.a and dk.h in standard places (e.g /usr/lib and
/usr/include). Set DKHOST to TRUE in postscript.mk to get Datakit support
on System V.
If you're stuck and need to have things behave as they did in the past
take a look at file postio/postio.mk. Define DKHOSTDIR and uncomment
three lines and the behavior should be close to what it was.
15: Picture inclusion and color macros are gone. They're included in the DWB
package, and not here.
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Version 3.2 11/27/89
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1: Implemented height and slant requests in dpost.
2: Modified the behavior of all translators so save objects are no longer left
on the stack. The original implementation was a mistake and occasionally
(e.g. picture inclusion with forms.ps) resulted in invalid restores.
3: Fixed the mistake in the external declaration of mesg in postio/slowsend.c.
4: The malloc() call in postdmd (routine dimensions()) is only made if patterns
is positive.
5: Changed definition of De in draw.ps so savematrix is loaded with the CTM
whenever De is executed. Original implementation didn't work with forms.ps
because the CTM is changed with each page image. (4/29/89)
6: Flush stdout when postio is invoked with the -t option - just convenient
not necessary. (4/30/89)
7: Included a man page for the picture inclusion macros - file man/mpictures.5.
(5/6/89)
8: Added BoundingBox code to dpost - still needs to go in other translators.
Most of the work is done in common/bbox.c. (5/7/89)
9: Fiddled with the bracket building stuff in dpost.ps so things finally look
decent. Was particularly bad on the typesetter.
10: dpost now generates a PageBoundingBox comment and ps_include.c accepts
the comment. Added -B option to enable/disable the BoundingBox calculations.
-Bon to enable and -Boff to disable. On by default now, but that may change.
Add similar code to the rest of the translators (6/20/89).
11: Fixed ps_include.c so it properly handles %%BeginGlobal and %%EndGlobal.
Added braces and compare page.start to page.end instead of 0.
12: Added xymove(hpos, vpos) for \X'PS ...' request - near the end of devcntrl().
Must output position info for following PostScript.
13: Added a call to endtext() immediately before the oput() call for \N'...'
requests. Without it spacing often messed up with -e2 but not -e0.
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Version 3.1 11/15/88
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1: postio can run as one or two processes (-R option) and can establish an
interactive connection with a postscript printer (-i option). Parsing of
status reports has been improved. The status query mechanism can be disabled
using the -q option. An exit status of 1 implies a system error (eg. can't
open the line) while 2 usually means there was an error in the PostScript
file. By default postio runs as a single process. The -B, -R, and -q options
can be used to speed things up some. A version of the program (previously
supplied in postio.tmp) that can help if you seem to be having flow control
problems can be obtained using the -S option. It's not generally recommended
and should only be used as a last resort!
2: Several widthshow encoding schemes have been added to dpost and can reduce
print time by 20% or more. The method used to encode lines of text can be
changed on the command line using the -e option. Level 0 produces output
essentially identical to previous versions of dpost. The default can be
changed by modifying the definition of ENCODING in ./Makefile. At present
only level 0 is thoroughly tested, although level 2 (ie. -e2) may be the
default and is undoubtedly worth a try.
3: dpost now supports color selection and reverse video. Access in troff is via
the stand-alone macro package ./macros/color. Examples are,
.so /usr/lib/macros/color
.CL red "this prints in red"
.CL "white on black" "and this prints white text on a black background"
The postscript procedures that handle color and reverse video can be found
in ./postscript/color.ps. Additional colors can be added to the colordict
dictionary defined in ./postscript/color.ps.
4: The dpost drawing routines have been improved and have been moved from the
prologue (ie. ./postscript/dpost.ps) to ./postscript/draw.ps. That file is
only included if needed. Drawing routines now support the ability to group
a series of drawing commands together as a single path. May be useful for
future versions of pic that wish to fill regions with colors or gray levels.
Access is via the new "x X BeginPath" and "x X DrawPath" device control
commands. In addition there's some complicated PostScript code in file
./postscript/baseline.ps, that can be used to set text along an arbitrary
curve. It's terribly confusing and I doubt anyone will have the patience to
bother to figure it out.
5: A simple picture packing troff preprocessor (picpack) has been included and
the code needed to recover pictures and text has been added to dpost. The
program is designed to supplement to the original picture inclusion mechanism,
and should ONLY be used when absolutely necessary. Using dpost to pull picture
files into a document is strongly recommended and will always be the more
efficient and portable approach. picpack simply provides a way to combine
pictures and text in a single file before dpost is executed. It may help in
a distributed printing environment where the user runs everything through
troff while a spooling daemon (eg. lp) handles the postprocessing. There
are serious disadvantages to this approach, with perhaps the most important
being that troff output files (when picpack is used) will likely result in
files that can no longer be reliably passed through other important post-
processors like proof.
6: Code to handle host resident PostScript fonts in dpost has been tested and
finally works. The -H option points dpost to a host resident font directory,
which by default is NULL. Host resident font files stored in that directory
must be assigned a name that corresponds to the one or two character troff
font name. Width tables must also be built (see buildtables/README), the new
binary font files must be installed in /usr/lib/font/devpost, and a mapping
definition from troff's name to the PostScript font name must be added to
./postscript/dpost.ps.
7: The default pattern length in postdmd has been reduced to from 10 to 6 bytes.
Printers with fast processors (eg. PS-810s) often benefit from a further
reduction, while optimal performance on slower printers (eg PS-800s) may
require larger pattern sizes. The pattern length can be set using the -b
option. Increasing the pattern size usually increases the size of the output
file.
8: Line drawing in posttek and postbgi includes code that automatically ties
lines to device space coordinates when you select a non-zero width. Helps
eliminate the variation in line thickness that many observed. The default
line width in posttek and postbgi is still 0 (which gets 1 pixel). If you
want a different default change the definition of variable linewidth in files
./postscript/posttek.ps and ./postscript/postbgi.ps.
9: Defocused lines in posttek have been fixed.
10: postbgi now supports color and can be used to translate most PRISM (color
BGI) jobs. Special device specific tuning needed for many PRISM jobs can be
enabled by using the -P"/prism true" option. Missing pieces (eg. subroutines)
needed for translating PRISM jobs, have also been implemented.
11: postreverse can reverse the pages in documents that conform to Adobe's 1.0
or 2.0 file structuring conventions, and it works with all the translators in
this package. The new version is backwards compatible, but files produced by
the new translators should not be passed through old versions of postreverse.
The likely result will be no output at all. If you choose to do a partial
installation put the new postreverse up first!
12: All translators attempt to conform to Adobe's Version 2.0 file structuring
conventions. dpost output falls short, but only in the interest of efficiency.
Passing dpost output through postreverse (perhaps with the -r option) produces
a minimally conforming PostScript file.
13: All the translators now support three options that pass arbitrary PostScript
through to the output file. The -P and -C options add a string and the
contents of a file respectively immediately after the prologue. It's assumed
whatever is added is legitimate PostScript - there is no checking. In each
case the added PostScript code becomes part of the job's global environment.
The -R option can be used to request special action (eg. manualfeed) on a
global or page basis. The argument should be "request", "request:page", or
"request:page:file". If page is given as 0 or omitted the request applies
globally. If file is omitted the lookup is in /usr/lib/postscript/ps.requests.
The collection of recognized requests can be modified or extended by changing
/usr/lib/postscript/ps.requests.
14: PostScript code (from Johnathan Shopiro) that produces bolder versions of the
Courier fonts has been included in file postscript/fatcourier.ps. The file
can be added to individual prologue files (eg. dpost.ps) or pulled in as
needed using the -C option.
15: postmd is a new program that can be used to display a large matrix as a gray
scale image. May help if you're looking for patterns in a large matrix. A very
optimistic estimate suggests you can display up to a 600x600 matrix (with five
different shades of gray) on 300dpi printer using 8.5x11 inch paper.
16: What's available in buildtables has been cleaned up and works well with the
new version of postio. It can be used to have PostScript printers build troff
width tables for both printer and host resident fonts.
17: The PostScript bind operator has been applied to all procedures that are
expected to be executed more than once. Redefined save and restore procedures
are no longer needed and saverestore.ps is not included in this package.
18: The bizarre PostScript code used to get to the upper left corner of a page
in old versions of dpost.ps and postprint.ps has been replaced by something
that's at least slightly more comprehensible. All prologues have also been
changed so picture inclusion (eg. including a pic picture that's been run
through troff and dpost) should work better than previous versions. Still
missing (from most translators) is the %%BoundingBox comment and even when
it's put out (by postdmd) only the dimensions are correct - sorry!
19: The careless mistake in the DKHOST section of postio that some noticed belongs
to me (not Allan Buckwalter) and has now been fixed.
20: By default all prologues still use the current clipping path to determine page
dimensions, but that behavior can be disabled by setting boolean useclippath
(in each prologue) to false. In that case the page dimensions will be taken
from array pagebbox, which by default is initialized to 8x11 inch paper. The
-P options (in each translator) can change useclippth and pagebbox.
21: New in the misc directory is sample lp support from Maryann Csaszar and a
simple program that converts host resident font files obtained from a Macintosh
to a format that works on Unix.