🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov12.153918.12371@usiva.com>, brooks@usiva.com (Lyle D. Brooks) writes:
> So what makes for the best PostScript??
> 
> a) DSC conformance
> b) Size
> c) Performance
> d) Readability
> e) Viewing
> f) None of the Above
> 
> Any opinions??

DSC conformance is the most important feature in any computer-generated
PostScript. And this means real DSC compliance, no just using the bits that
you want to and ignoring the others, or changing the comments to suit you
(e.g. removing the label from %%Page: listening, Sun?). It also means putting
the correct headers on documents (Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 produces
multi-page documents claiming to be EPSF; they haven't read page 709 of the
Red book (2nd Edn.)). Most of the problems I have with documents come down to:

1) Bad %%BoundingBoxes. If you don't have one, don't set it, and don't claim
   to be EPSF. Don't use reals, because they're supposed to be ints.

2) Bad page encapsulation. If you're pages aren't encapsulated completely,
   don't claim to be DSC compliant, or fix it so that they are encapsulated.

I'm currently revising my PSUtils package, and am implementing an ad-hoc
parser for DSC comments. I thought about using Yacc and lex, but there are too
many awkward bits to deal with (e.g. unbracketed text tokens containing just
digits, %%+ comments). The DSC conventions are not very hard to read and
interpret (there are a few unclear areas, such as which comments can be nested
inside others), so there is no excuse for any PostScript developer not to
produce DSC-compliant code.

a.
--
Angus Duggan, Department of Computer Science,	| PSUtils is available from
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