This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (543 messages)
Yes, there are commands which are forbidden in an EPS file, such as banddevice, exitserver, initgraphics, erasepage, initmatrix and renderbands … there are also others (such as nulldevice, sethalftone, setmatrix, underlinefont and setgstate) which must comply with very specific rules so that they don't affect the global document. Some of…
Richard Generic PostScript files were never intended for inclusion in other documents. If you _do_ want to include a PostScript file, then it has to be designed that way in the first place; simply `wrapping' any old PS file with the EPS structured comments won't do. In other words, it's…
ProPage actually comes complete with a number of pre-made macros (sorry, `genies'). However, I think you'll probably find yourself preferring PStream. Mike (from the UK)
The only reason I say that they're limited is that they don't have the power of fully-programmable macros. After all, the PPage `genies' are really just sophisticated macros written in ARexx. PStream's macros are really just a way of recording a sequence of keystrokes, and the macro `language' is just…
John I'd agree with your interpretation of what I was trying to say. An EPS file doesn't have to have any print procedures (although showpage is _not_ one of the forbidden operators any more as it can [and should] be redefined by the `host' PostScript program). My feeling is that,…
Richard I would agree with John that, in a strict sense EPS _is_ a subset of the PostScript language since some commands are specifically forbidden by the standard and additional restructions are placed upon the program (albeit the command set is 99.9% of PostScript and, as you say, even SHOWPAGE…
Sorry … I musindertood you 🙂 As for `unreadable obfuscation', PostScript seems ideally suited to this! Mike (from the UK)
I think you'll find an '030/25MHz A2000 looks fairly good on PageStream, and I doubt you'll see a great deal of difference between that and PPage for most things. ARexx in PageStream is only half of the way towards doing what ProPage has done .. you then need a `secripting'…
Michael I don't know Illustrator (which is probably quite obvious by now :-), but I must therefore assume then that it uses a very limited and/or carefully structured subset of PostScript to provide its structured images? If that's the case, then I can understand how PStream could handle it ……
Rocket museum … heading back to Texas via Alamagordo and Carlsbad. I saw some of Arizona last year and _loved_ it … by the way, how busy do you think it's likely to be in southern AZ during Labor Day weekend (which is when I'm likely to be there)? Mike…
Bob By the `insert' and `delete' a point, I assume you mean the `add a control point' and `cut a control point' tools. ARexx certainly isn't required to use these, and they should be displayed at the bottom of the tools. You should have a total of 16 small tools…
Michael Sorry to be a bit pedantic, but your statement `They are all in Adobe Illustrator EPS format, which means that you can edit them in PageStream or Art Expression for printing to any type of printer…' isn't the full story and implies that you can actually edit the EPS…
Pete It's relatively simple. Call up CreateFont, and select ITCZapfChancery.dat as your source … select your destination directory (CreateFont will make up its own name) … and off you go. You will end up with ZapfChancery-MediumItalic.psfont which POST should recognise if it's in CGfonts:PS (the search logic is held within…
Just to add my ha'p'orth … the balance between ProPage and PStream is now changed somewhat. At one time, ProPage was very significantly better at doing most things (although it lacked the versatility of PStream, as it couldn't handle PostScript fonts or scale fonts) and, above all, was much more…
Is that the Buck Buchanan who put together that wonderful 1541 alignment disk (by cleverly modifying a 1541 drive to write accurately mis-aligned tracks)? I certainly remember the name from Brandon. Mike (from the UK)
And so say all of us!!!! Mike (from the UK)
John These fonts are Type-1 format … and I have a Type-1 disassembler for the purposes of examining the contents of the encrypted portion (I keep meaning to upload it here, but keep forgetting … will upload just as soon as I've finished this!!) When you say you worked out…
Chris Well, the line beginning with % is simply a comment so should cause no problems at all (lines beginning with %% are part of the document structuring convention, and should have a specified syntax following the %%, but they're still to be ignored by the interpreter) The setting of…
Eric This is a problem with PDraw itself … I reported it as a bug to Gold-Disk but have not yet had any response (I use a slightly non-standard keymap, and using PDraw with text is _very_ confusing!!) For some reason, the programmers have not taken account of the keyboard…
I can't say I'm a copyright expert, but my job brings me into contact with very heavy international copyright issues and so I do a great deal of reading, and have many reference books … so here's my ha'p'orth: The software you buy is copyright … it therefore does not…
Branden PageStream is _streets_ ahead of ProPage in its font handling (and this is from a guy who wouldn't touch PStream a year ago!) Mike (from the UK)
Michael That's an excellent (and rather imaginative) move! Well Done Mike (from the UK)
Congratulations, John and Colleen. And enjoy the honeymoon! Mike (from the UK)
The extra cost? It obviously depends on quantity, but assuming audio-cut prices they'd cost about #6 each in quantities of 50 or less … about #2 for 2000+ Of course, a CD-ROM requires rather more than an audio-cut and will require additional work to produce the CD image, but a…
Yep … a CompuServe get-together at DevCon sounds an excellent idea! I hope to be there, and would love to meet some of the names I come across here on CIS. I'm one of those who do a little more than `pass-through' Betty's [indeed, I'll be there in only a…
Andrew … even the local `Tempo' store (that's a smallish brown and white goods electrical chain here in the UK) has a big CD-I demo stand where customers can go and play. The only thing they seem to have running is a golf game (which does look, to the average…
#WordPerfect
Message #64464
Because it does for me exactly what I want, with fairly powerful macros and good quality output. It's true that there are many other packages around nowadays that can do better, but when I bought Word Perfect for the Amiga it was by far the most powerful package around. Therefore,…
Hart's Rules
Message #64463
Shraddhan … glad you found it useful. Mike (from the UK)
Amiga Dead/P. Robinson
Message #64462
It's been very interesting to read the threads about Robinson's piece both on CompuServe and in the UK on CIX (copies of the article are appearing on various BBSes over here). I don't think I have read such diametrically opposed viewpoints!! The general view over here is that, while his…
#Post Landscape
Message #64461
Gracia Of course, with PPage3/PDraw3 you get a utility that will convert PostScript fonts to CompuGraphic format and that would avoid your having to use bitmap fonts. Mike (from the UK)
Pete I received my PDraw 3 (direct from G-D) at the end of last week (I registered with them directly in my Transactor days) But, as you say, it seems like none of the dealers here yet have it. I wonder if G-D is trying to fulfill back orders on…
I'd agree that the Amiga should be the primary machine … but the whole point of having a twin machine (PC+Amiga) is to allow the Amiga to get into businesses and it's only inside the PC Trojan Horse that this could happen. My original suggestion was really just as you…
Chris … that sounds _perfect_! So, how about it Gold Disk (and/or Soft Logik :-)?
Gracia When you get the on-screen-interactive POST up and running, you need to have init.ps in the first box, and the name of your own file in the second box … and so on. However, if you just use init.ps there, you can run your own .ps file by selecting…
Yep, I'd prefer the second way too. Mike (from the UK)
It might be worth trying to run POST on its own (on the Amiga screen) and see what the results are. One possibility (for all that black) is that you have preferences set for a negative image. I don't know if this would cause the problem, but it's worth a…
How about, when you type “ you get smart opening quoes and '' gives you smart closing quotes? No, I didn't think so 🙂 Yes, you do need an easy way of handling this … I personally would like a three tier system. The first two would be to have…
A good bit of lateral thinking 🙂 Mike (from the UK)
Bug in PPage 3.0
Message #63789
Bug in ProPage 3.0: If I start PPage up in (or it defaults to) non-interlace mode (640×256), I only get the botom half of the characters when using CompuGraphic fonts. Any attempt to switch to interlace mode (even if it doesn't succeed because of memory shortage) sorts this out ……
Mike the tracer sounds excellent … can I suggest a user-definable maximum points reduction option since, as you rightly say, so much depends on the printer. The minimum implementation limit quoted in the Red-book is 1500, but could be a lot more (or, in some rare cases, it be less.)…
Indeed it is … but, the A1000 was a highly innovative machine in a market that couldn't quite get enough technology … it did take a long time to establish itself in the consumer market … but all this was a long time ago, when we weren't in a world…
Well, it seems it's a case of `out of the frying pan into the fire'! The Guru is not something I can immediately help you with … I don't normally run 2.04 with POST (as it doesn't give me enough memory to be of much use) so can't identify the…
Some characters deliberately have zero width, as they're intended as overstrikes so ignoring them might cause problems if you were using them as they were intended (however, that is fairly rare, as most of these symbols are diacriticals set up for the seac command). It's also true that a few…
I'd guess that'd look a little better than the hyphens … since underscores are usually finer lines and you wouldn't need to worry about spacing fore and aft. But how would you do an en-dash then 🙂 ? Mike (from the UK)
Looking at it in pure cold commercial terms, no manufacturer could afford to release a completely new machine onto a recession-hit market unless it could use a large amount of existing software. Making it compatible with existing software means that people will be prepared to upgrade, and it also means…
Gracia I haven't got the information to hand, so can't check immediately … but I suspect that your problem might be that you're using -11 (i.e. two numbers) when the option I use in PostLJ is -l1 (i.e. letter and number). If this doesn't work, let me know and I'll…
I certainly wish some of the US Amiga magazines were more readily available over here though 🙁 Mike (from the UK)
Jim If I remember correctly, if PageStream can't find the character you've asked for in the font you wanted, it'll go and get a generic character to replace it with on screen and will print with this to a dot-matrix printer. However, if those characters aren't in the PostScript font…
Philip You are correct … open/close quotes (and indeed many other characters in the AdobeStandardEncoding) are not part of the Amiga's character set and so aren't mapped onto the keyboard. I appreciate that there are difficulties in handling this … it's made a little worse in a way because ProPage…
I can't comment on `smart quotes', but I do know that in many fonts, the ` and ' characters are opening and closing single quotes (in true ASCII, they're grave and acute accents!). I've always just stuck two of them together and relied on the proportional spacing to get them…
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