🚀 go-pugleaf

    I should perhaps clarify my original post a bit... I don't need to
edit the EPS files themselves.  All I want is a package that will allow
me to place bitmap representations of them on a page, resize and
reposition them, and draw arrows and other annotation on the page.
Specifically, I have twelve EPS figures I want to combine on a single
page, reduced from their original size with arrows between them (it's
a chemical reaction pathway).  Sorry about the confusion.
-- 
Brian Tao:: taob@io.org (Internex Online, 416-363-4151, 80 lines, v.32bis)
::::::::::: - - --===+ Home page URL = http://www.io.org/~taob/ +===-- - -

Brian Tao (taob@io.org) wrote:
:     I should perhaps clarify my original post a bit... I don't need to
: edit the EPS files themselves.  All I want is a package that will allow
: me to place bitmap representations of them on a page, resize and
: reposition them, and draw arrows and other annotation on the page.
: Specifically, I have twelve EPS figures I want to combine on a single
: page, reduced from their original size with arrows between them (it's
: a chemical reaction pathway).  Sorry about the confusion.
: -- 
: Brian Tao:: taob@io.org (Internex Online, 416-363-4151, 80 lines, v.32bis)
: ::::::::::: - - --===+ Home page URL = http://www.io.org/~taob/ +===-- - -
I do not have a solution to your problem regarding the manipulation of EPS
file graphics, however, I do have something that may avoid the problem
altogether.
There is a nice company in San Leandro, CA called Molecular Design Limited
(510)-895-1300 (I think) that produces a series of products for drawing 2-d
and 3-2 molecular graphics and placing them in documents for printing on a
wide variety of printers.  Their products are chemically intelligent and
permit rotations, isomerizations, reaction diagrams, etc.  Great stuff!  The
last I heard, they were working on DOS, Windows, Mac, OS/2, VMS, and Unix
versions.

Give them a call and forget the EPS editing.

Have fun!
Andrew

I posted a query to the net one week ago with a description of the
problem I faced trying to incorporate multiple PostScript graphics into
a single figure.  The figure depicts a branched chemical reaction
pathway with three possible outcomes depending on various conditions.
The individual graphics are ball-and-stick drawings of the molecule
under study.  They were produced by a package called MindTool under
OpenWindows.  It saves in PostScript format.  My goal was to shrink and
place each graphic in their appropriate places on the page and insert
arrows and other annotative features before printing.  Since the final
figure is destined for the publisher, the quality of the reproduction
is important.

I'm happy to say I have found a reasonable solution in the past week.
Many thanks to the following people who kindly offered their assistance
and expertise in this matter, or discussed similar problems in their
publishing experience:

      Andrew Walls <bhd@well.sf.ca.us>
      Andy Phillips <andy.phillips@afrc.ac.uk>
      Beth Daye <bdaye@mps.ohio-state.edu>
      Brian Fristensky <frist@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
      Chris Goedde <goedde@jeeves.esam.nwu.edu>
      Christoph Gartmann <gartmann@immunbio.mpg.de>
      Chuck Lopez <cmlopez@amoco.com>
      Colin David Mccready <cdm2@doc.ic.ac.uk>
      David Mathod <mathog@seqvax.caltech.edu>
      David Middleton <dajm@stams.strath.ac.uk>
      Ellis Golub <ellis@biochem.dental.upenn.edu>
      Islam El-Mougy <islamel@corel.ca>
      James McIninch <james@amber.gatech.edu>
      Jean-Sebastien Neveu <neveu@rgl.polymtl.ca>
      Jeff Tozer <tozer@esseye.si.com>
      John Troyer <troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu>
      Lukasz Salwinski <lukasz@wlheye.jsei.ucla.edu>
      Michael D. Baron <michael.baron@afrc.ac.uk>
      Oliver Sharp <oliver@cs.berkeley.edu>
      Pat Wood <patwood@bix.com>
      Paul Asente <asente@mv.us.adobe.com>
      Peter Ehlers <ehlers@acs.ucalgary.ca>
      Peter J. McKinney <mckinney@me.umn.edu>
      RAMontante <bobmon@cs.indiana.edu>
      Robert Campbell <rlc@nrcbsw.bio.nrc.ca>
      Russell Smith <smith@cbrsgi.med.harvard.edu>
      Steeve McCauley <steeve@stoner.eps.mcgill.ca>
      Steven Culliver <culliver@steven.cbme.unsw.edu.au>
      T.C. Zhao <zhao@bragg.phys.uwm.edu>
      tchuang <tchuang@cube.ep.nctu.edu.tw>
      Tim Baughman <exutlb@exu.ericsson.se>
      Tony Thomas <aa699@cleveland.freenet.edu>
      William Cheng <william@cs.ucla.edu>
      William Delp <delp@carnot05.maem.umr.edu>
      Zvi Meir Kedem <kedem@Csd36.cs.nyu.edu>

For those of you in a hurry ;-), I'll describe my current working
solution first, then go into more detail about other ideas suggested to
me by the contributors listed above.  Please feel free to followup on
this posting if any part of it deserves clarification (please note the
Followup-To: header).

Although it has been a week since my first posting, e-mail continues to
trickle in at a rate of about four a day.  This is a great example of
how Usenet is still a valuable resource, despite some of the crap
certain entities have tried to pull in recent months.  Thanks
everyone!



WORKING SOLUTION
----------------

First prize goes to Michael Baron.  :)  He wrote:

MB> Oh, I just thought of another way: there is a GS script called ps2ai
MB> which converts PS to adobe Illustrator format. Illustrator is
MB> supposed to read and interpret such files, allowing them to be edited
MB> as objects, rather than PS. I don't have the program, so I can only
MB> report what I've heard.

Three days later, he e-mailed me the ps2ai.ps and ps2ai.doc files and
it works wonderfully with GhostScript 2.6.1 on our Sparcs.  It takes
standard PostScript files (like the ones produced by MindTool) and
converts them into Adobe Illustrator 3.0 drawings.  CorelDraw imports
AI files as a group of fully editable objects.  This allows me to edit
each individual component of the graphic, as needed (e.g., shading of
atoms, appearance of bonds, etc.).  Until I locate the problem with
printing from xfig/tgif (see NOTES section), ps2ai + CD4 makes a nice
combination.

Jason Olszewski <olszewsk@splash.princeton.edu> is the author of the
'ps2ai' converter, and apparently it is part of the GhostScript 3
distribution (contact L. Peter Deutsch <ghost@aladdin.com> for the
exact details).  One caveat when working with CD4:  it does not
seem to recognize the font names in an AI file.  Everything shows up
in the Arial font.  I tried exporting an AI file from CD4, then
importing it again as a test.  Sure enough, the font information was
lost.  Inexplicably, CD4 does not allow you to select a group of text
objects and change their attributes all at once.  I had to change one
text object, then use the "Copy Attributes From..." menu item to change
the rest.  This problem is documented in ps2ai, so the user is given
fair warning.  Besides that, everything else imported correctly.
Perhaps CD5 solves this problem.

Again, my gratitude to Michael Baron for supplying me with the ps2ai
script and ending one week of frustration with this figure.  ;-)

(a long set of notes follows)



NOTES
-----

Many others have contributed suggestions which, for one reason or
another, are not suited to my specific problem, but which may help
others in similar situations.

The problem, in a nutshell, was this:  most drawing packages will allow
you to import PS and EPS graphics, but cannot display them on the
screen for preview.  This prevents accurate placement of annotative
features on the page.  GhostScript can create EPS files with a bitmap
preview to allow drawing packages to display a thumbnail of the PS
file.  Unfortunately, it isn't as straightforward as that.  From the
comp.lang.postscript FAQ:

FAQ> Subject: 9.1 What is Encapsulated PostScript? 
FAQ>
FAQ>     Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a standard format for
FAQ>     importing and exporting PostScript language files in all
FAQ>     environments. It is usually a single page PostScript
FAQ>     language program that describes an illustration. The
FAQ>     purpose of the EPS file is to be included as an
FAQ>     illustration in other PostScript language page
FAQ>     descriptions. The EPS file can contain any combination of
FAQ>     text, graphics, and images.  An EPS file is the same as any
FAQ>     other PostScript language page description, with some
FAQ>     restrictions.
FAQ>
FAQ>     EPS files can optionally contain a bitmapped image preview,
FAQ>     so that systems that can't render PostScript directly can
FAQ>     at least display a crude representation of what the graphic
FAQ>     will look like. There are three preview formats: Mac
FAQ>     (PICT), IBM (tiff), and a platform independent preview
FAQ>     called EPSI.

The 'ps2epsi' converter creates EPSI files (obviously).  UNIX-based
drawing packages follow this convention.  Xfig 2.1 (Brian V. Smith
<bvsmith@lbl.gov>) will import EPSI and correctly display the bitmap
preview on the screen.  Another excellent X11-based drawing package
(better than xfig, IMHO) is 'tgif', by William Cheng.  Tgif sports a
truckload of very useful features, including exporting to several
flavours of PostScript, importing XBM's, full colour XPM's and EPSI
files, tear-off menus, pop-up tool palettes, a "quick click" palette
for adjusting various program settings, etc.  It is definitely worth a
look.  Both xfig and tgif are available on the ftp.x.org anonymous FTP
site.

As I mentioned in my initial posting, our QMS-410PS printer refuses to
print anything that includes an embedded EPS file (xfig and tgif both
had this problem).  I suspect an illegal command in the EPS files is
causing this.  Tgif can save the printer PS to a file, and viewing it
with GhostScript confirms this:  only the arrows and text show up...
the included EPS graphics are left out.  The comp.lang.postscript FAQ
contains a more detailed description of illegal EPS commands.  I will
have to investigate this further.

--
Showcase 3.2 for SGI's came very close to satisfying my requirements.
It reads in EPSI files and prints them to our printer (it probably
knows to filter out the offending PS lines).  Arrow and annotative
features are really easy to create, and the results are quite nice.
Unfortunately, we don't have an SGI in our lab capable of running
Showcase 3.2 (we have an old Personal IRIS with 16 megs of RAM running
IRIX 3.3.2).  The folks in the lab next door were kind enough to give
me some console time on their Indigo^2 (very nice!) to experiment.  It
also lacks the numerical scaling function of xfig and tgif, but visual
scaling works well enough.  So for those who are able to run Showcase
on their SGI's, it works quite nicely for this kind of stuff.  Thanks
to Piotr Sliz <sliz@eros.med.utoronto.ca> for preparing publication-
quality figures on Showcase while I fielded suggestions from the net.

--
Islam El-Mougy, a Corel developer, was kind enough to verify that
CorelDraw 5 was able to import my original PS files and convert the
graphic into native CD objects.  The net effect is the same as going
through the ps2ai converter, but I can import directly to CD5 from
PostScript.  Pat Wood, Tony Thomas, Chuck Lopez and Colin David
Mccready all suggested that I try CD5.  I'll upgrade one of these
days.  :)

--
David Mathog writes:

DM> DECwrite will do this with EPSF (not PostScript), and is available
DM> for a variety of platforms, including VMS, OSF/1, Windows, possibly
DM> other Unixes.  On the VMS and OSF/1 platforms you will be able to
DM> see the EPS in the document on the screen, and actually draw/write
DM> on top of it.
DM>
DM> The program is a bit hard to use, but for this one thing, it's
DM> great.  If you are an academic site, it is part of Digital's CSLG
DM> (if somebody there belongs). Ie, it doesn't cost any more than the
DM> CSLG.  If not, it's really steep, like 1870 for VMS or OSF/1, 646
DM> for Windows.  For more info call 800/DIGITAL.  If you aren't an
DM> academic site, you might as well buy any of a number of PC or Mac
DM> publishing programs which do the same thing for a thousand dollars
DM> or less.

People with the appropriate hardware may want to investigate this one
further.  Other packages suggested to me:  Adobe Illustrator and the
Adobe Acrobat distiller, Transverter Pro (can convert EPS to AI), Frame
4.0, Tailor (on NeXTStep systems), Canvas (for the Macintosh) and idraw
(for Sparcs running InterViews).  Andrew Walls suggested a different
course of action:

AW> There is a nice company in San Leandro, CA called Molecular Design
AW> Limited (510)-895-1300 (I think) that produces a series of products
AW> for drawing 2-d and 3-2 molecular graphics and placing them in
AW> documents for printing on a wide variety of printers.  Their
AW> products are chemically intelligent and permit rotations,
AW> isomerizations, reaction diagrams, etc.  Great stuff!  The last I
AW> heard, they were working on DOS, Windows, Mac, OS/2, VMS, and Unix
AW> versions.

--
Some brave and hardy folks suggested that I do the whole thing manually
and edit the PS files by hand to create the final figure.  I'm not
*quite* that proficient in PostScript yet ;-), but Chris Goedde
suggested this:

CG> If you decide you need to do some of this by hand anyway, I have a
CG> little library of functions that deals with rotating text,
CG> centering text, greek letters and super- and sub-scripts in a nice
CG> way.  I can send them to you if you want them.

--
Several people suggested that I rasterize the original PS file and save
it as a GIF or TIFF using various tools (snapshot, xv, imagesnap, xwd,
etc.).  The bitmap could then be imported into whatever drawing package
I wanted for editing.  Ellis Golub said that GhostView for Windows can
rasterize PostScript files, place them on the clipboard and then pasted
into CorelDraw.  Unfortunately, this was not really an option.  Anyone
who has tried to scale or rotate a bitmap and then print it to a
high-resolution device will be familiar with the dramatic loss of
quality.  One of my priorities was to retain the object-based qualities
of the PostScript file.  Features such as hairlines and halftone
screens can then be preserved no matter what scale, rotation or
resolution I decide to use.


[END]
-- 
Brian Tao:: taob@io.org (Internex Online, 416-363-4151, 80 lines, v.32bis)
::::::::::: - - --===+ Home page URL = http://www.io.org/~taob/ +===-- - -