🚀 go-pugleaf

(This is a re-post, something got mixed up)
johnk@peyote.cactus.org writes
>> I found out that mac and ibm EPS formats were different.  Great.
EPS itself is one format, independent of the machine type. However, on
the Mac filing system, you can add a PICT preview bitmap in the
resource fork, and on the PC you can precede the EPS file proper with
a strange header indicating that the file contains both a real (to my
thinking, that is) EPS section, and also a bitmap section, either in
metafile or TIFF. Although Adobe put this in the EPS spec (pp12-13 in
spec version 2.0) it's not so much Encapsulated PS as a way of saying
there are two logical files stuffed into one real one. (Doubly
encapsulated?)

>>The whole point in my trying to figure out EPS was to modify a graphics
>>program I have to produce postscript output, IE I want to print (gasp) bit
>>mapped images.  As far as I can tell, EPS has better support of
>>bitmaps than PS

The bitmap section of the file is optional, and is intended for
previewing in page makeup programs and so on - not a full resolution
image. You still put the bitmap in the actual PS code.

If you really want to do the preview stuff (which is nice, but most
tools don't bother), there is a device-independent version of the
preview bitmap (pp13-15 of the EPS spec) which you could use. I don't
know whether Mac or PC applications will understand this in practice -
in principle they should.

>>and the same goes for color.
EPS lets you give a description of the colour scheme used, to help out
fancy spooling systems (along the lines of telling it what colour ink
to load into your colour printer!). However, all the colour
information must still be in the actual PostScript.

>>Anyway, would I be better off trying to use straight PS or should I try to
>>make sense out of the two EPS file standards?
Try the one EPS file standard :-)
See the final paragraph of p12 - "it is always permissible.... as long
as it does not contain the preview section"
Besides, I doubt that PageMaker will try to import a non-encapsulated
PostScript file.
--
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