[tex-k] dvips: BeginPaperSize in postscript DSC

pierre.mackay pierre.mackay at comcast.net
Thu Nov 16 01:04:50 CET 2006


Jean-François Mertens wrote:
> On 15 Nov 2006, at 13:06, pierre.mackay wrote:
>
>   
>> Jean-François Mertens wrote:
>>     
>>> On 14 Nov 2006, at 11:58, pierre.mackay wrote:
>>>       
>> Mr. Mertens raises a legitimate question, but it is out of our  
>> control.  Documents in Computer Modern exclusively can hope
>> to be absolutely archival but, I suspect, only if they abjure the  
>> use of type1 fonts altogether.  Documents in New Times Roman, or
>> any other proprietary font, can pray, and perhaps hope, to be  
>> archival in the sense that Knuth intended, but they are at the
>> mercy of commercial taste.
>>     
> Pierre :
> I would think they should not be completely out of our control _ as  
> long as users stick with embedding all fonts_,
> provided we can reach an agreement with the gs people that they will  
> continue to recognize one or 2 very well
> defined ps formats (say Adobe2 as in use by dvips till now, and  
> whatever spec of Adobe3) for the time being.
>   
Do we in fact know of any instance, other than the recognition of 
certain styles of Structuring Comments that
started this thread, where PS 3.0 fails on a properly formed PS 2.0 
file?  The PS 3.0 manual deprecates certain things, but
it does not prohibit them.  Is there really a move to turn off 
deprecated 2.0 operations altogether? (And if that is a worry, what
about the hints that the LaTeX people want to shut down certain Knuth 
primitives in the final move to LaTeX3?)

Do you have an example of a PS operation, rather than a Comment, that 
fails because of an upgrade in Ghostscript?

And by the way, consider that PDF denies you the use of Structuring 
Comments anyway.  That is one of the many reasons
that I don't want to use any version of TeX that drops output into the 
PDF black box. 
> And, as long as we stick we a couple of very well defined and  
> recognised specs, in a couple of decades,
> I would think it is quite reasonable to hope that if gs (or  
> successor) no longer wants to support some input format,
> we'll get translators from the old ones to the newer ones.
> After all, it is eg ghostscript's basic role to translate ps input do  
> different output devices _ so the output device
> could be just "current ps"
>
> And of course _ when "current ps" ends, we're all dead ...
>
> But I would think it is important to get in contact with the gs  
> people in this respect...
>
> Best,
>
> Jean-Francois
>
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>   



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