CompuServe Messages

My expe%+\ce is that the interpreter in a PostScript RIP is expecting stings to contain "the printable subset of the ASCII character set, plus the characters space, tab, and newline" (Red Book). When I've sent Macintosh PageMaker PostScript files to a PostScript RIP from a PC compatible the higher order bits used in the PM file are not recognized. The Red Book recommends that a character outside of the standard code set be called out with a string in the form \ddd, where "ddd" is a octal code. (Red Book p. 23). (I assume that Macintosh downloading software automatically converts PageMaker's higher order bits to the proper \ddd code.) Here's what I've done to do a translation table: (1) Create a document on the Macintosh which uses all the special characters. (You can see all the special characters available and the keystrokes which create them with the Key Caps utility.) (2) Move the document to a PC or Unix system where you can examine the file with a utility which shows the actual ASCII value of each special character. I used an MS-DOS utility called DUMP which showed Hex values, which I then converted to Octal. (3) Write a program (or use a utility program) which can do a character-to-character translation, translating each higher-order ASCII value to the Octal code \ddd. You can look up the octal codes in Appendix A of the Red Book. I have no idea why the authors of the code for PageMaker chose to use non-standard PostScript code for the special characters. It doesn't make sense to me.