Problem postscript files

[Andrej Marjan]

On Wednesday 24 January 2007 11:41, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Neil Watson wrote:
> > I've been given some files from a third party.  They claim that these
> > files are postscript files.  The will print in Windows using the CLI
> > 'print' command.  They will not print to any postscript printers on a
> > Linux server.  The Linux 'file' command reports that the files are
> > postscript.  Is this some sort of 'embrace and extend' example?
>
> Probably not, broken PS isn't usually deliberate.

There's one gotcha with Windows: some manufacturer-specific drivers (I 
remember HP) will insert printer-specific binary job control gunk at the 
start of the file. This gunk can cause problems on other postscript 
interpreters.

Neil could try opening the files in a text editor. Pure postscript files start 
with something like 

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 Resource-ProcSet

If there's anything ahead of that line, delete it and try again.

> When you say they won't print to postscript printers on a Linux server,
> that _might_ be because the Linux print systems are introducing their
> own garbage, so it's important to set your printing flags to ensure that
> extra file-processing is disabled. I've occasionally encountered
> situations in which the Linux print system, in a misguided attempt to be
> helpful, thinks the PS code is actually a source file, and prints the PS
> instructions rather than executing them!

Yes, it's quite annoying to discover that by finding a hundred pages of 
postscript source sitting in your printer's out tray...
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