🚀 go-pugleaf

prim!dave@germany.eu.net (Dave Griffiths) writes:

>In article <1992Jul31.053336.6399@csus.edu> eps@cs.sfsu.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Jul30.113455.13997@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
>>	tim@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Tim Pugh) writes:
>>>Please podon my ignorance but it would seem that PostScript is a great
>>>output file format but not readily available as an input format.  While
>>>I am able to open a '.ps' file in Edit, all I see is "raw" PostScript".
>>>WriteNow will not even show that a '.ps' file exists in it's open panel.
>>>While Preview is great for display of a '.ps' file, how does one convert
>>>it to an input format such as RTF or ASCII (without the PS commands)?
>>
>>The general answer is, "you can't."  PostScript is an honest-to-
>>goodness programming language, and the ONLY way to make sense of
>>arbitrary PostScript is to execute it.  Except for rigid subsets
>>(such as Adobe Illustrator format) that are basically data
>>structures suitably contrived to pass for valid PostScript, it's
>>impossible to do what you're asking for any but the most trivial
>>files (which generally means no reencodings, no kerning, etc.).
>>Sometimes you can get away with redefining a whole bunch of
>>operators (ref. distill) and get something meaningful, especially
>>if whatever generated the PostScript in the first place wasn't
>>deliberately mean-spirited.
>>

>While it may be true that "we can't", surely it is true that NeXT *can*?
>In other words, it must be possible to add some functionality to the
>window server to say "give me the text in this rectangle"? (Maybe in
>RTF. Lets forget about the graphics for the time being.) Since the window
>server is interpreting the postscript, *it* must know where it is placing
>the text and what font is being used?

>Given the pervasiveness of postscript on the NeXT and the usefulness of
>being able to extract RTF from postscript for cutting and pasting
>purposes, I'm really surprised that no such ability exists.

>Dave Griffiths

As the original poster of the query, finding there was no NeXT supplied
way to do the above, I tried the Create application.  Since all I was
really trying to do was to fill in the blanks on a software license
for Andrew, I fould that Create does this job nicely.  However, I agree
with Dave that it would be nice if NeXT supplied us with a tool to do
this, perhaps built into Preview.

Tim
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