🚀 go-pugleaf

To amplify a bit: by "usable object", you mean a string that displays or "is drawn upon" the page, correct?

You don't need ASCII85 for that. Just a regular string'll do. Strings are delimited by parens:

(In PostScript, this is a string).

To show the string, first define a position on the page where you want the string to be drawn. A "current point" in PostScript parlance.

You do this with a code snippet as so "72 144 moveto". PostScript uses "points" as a unit, 72 points per inch. Origin is usually (by default that is to say. Your program might have altered this) in the lower left hand corner of the page. So 72 144 moveto means "1 inch from the left, 2 inches from the bottom". Then you put your string, followed by the "show" operator.

As Aandi mentions, you have to have a current font.

A more complete code fragment:

gsave
/Courier 18 selectfont
72 144 moveto
(This is my string) show
grestore

The problem of course is where to put this code. That depends really on the nature of your existing PostScript program. If it's DSC-compliant, pages are delineated with comments, so a page might begin:

%%Page: 1 1

There will be a Page Setup section. You can slip the code in right after the "%%EndPageSetup" comment for that page.

If your code isn't DSC (Document Structuring Conventions), then it'll be a little more difficult.

If you need more help than this, you can email me. You can find my email address on my website.

Thomas D. Greer
 <http://www.tgreer.com>