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Article View: comp.lang.postscript
Article #2032

Preview Bitmaps for PS and EPS files?

#2032
From: Rodney Mcduff
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 05:12
70 lines
3439 bytes
It occurs to me that it would a 'good thing' to be able
to insert/append a preview bitmap into a arbitary postscript file.
With this facility one could for example import a postscript file
as a eps object into Xfig and see the bitmap displayed. (Thus one
can modify (or add to) a drawing or graph etc etc.)

So the question is "Is there some software out there that can achieve this?".


Now with the ghostscript package there exist a PS program (ps2image.ps) that 
is atleast heading in the right direction. It converts a PS file
into a hex bitmap which it then reads and display. ie. 

#! 
# start of converted PS file
/readimage {gsave matrix setmatrix 1 matrix 3 index 7 add 8 idiv string currentfile exch 
{2 copy 1 index token pop 2 index token pop getinterval readhexstring pop pop dup}
 3 1 roll 7 2 roll image pop pop grestore showpage} bind def
568 736 readimage
0 71 fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
.
. 
lots of hex stuff
.
.
# end  of converted PS file

However what we want is something like this

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 18 335 345
%%Title: logo.eps ( this is an example EPS file with a preview bitmap that comes with Xfig)
%%Creator: boyter
%%CreationDate: Wed Mar 27 09:22:54 1991

%%BeginPreview: 391 391 1 391
% 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003ffe00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
% 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003ffffffffe00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
.
.
lots of hex stuff
.
.
% 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffffffffffffff000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
% 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000007fffffffff00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
%%EndPreview
.
.
Rest of original PS file
.
.

So it should be feasible that with ghostscript and an appropriate PS program one
can include/append a preview bitmap into an arbitary PS file. 

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From: mcduff@newton.physics.uq.oz.au (Rodney Mcduff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Preview Bitmaps for PS and EPS files?
Message-ID: <Bts6H4.HA3@bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au>
Date: 30 Aug 92 05:12:40 GMT
Sender: news@bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au (USENET News System)
Organization: Physics Dept. The University of Queensland
Lines: 70