Many things

From: Scott Stevens <chenmel_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Fri Jan 28 20:09:55 2005

On Fri, 28 Jan 05 18:30:52 GMT
msokolov_at_ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov) wrote:

> Randy McLaughlin <randy_at_s100-manuals.com> wrote:
>
> > - Run the result through tiff2ps(1)
> > - and finaly generate a PDF with ps2pdf(1).
>
> Could you perhaps be a little more friendly to people like me and Tony
> Duell who actually _USE_ our classic computers for our day-to-day
> work, including viewing classic computer documentation, and make the
> PostScript available as well, i.e., with the last step omitted?
>
> PostScript is infinitely more friendly to Classic Computers than PDF.
> A PostScript document can be easily handled by someone who has no
> computing technology younger than 1985, that's almost 20 y old, not
> just 10. No graphical operating system required (how the heck is one
> supposed to run Adobe Acrobat on a vintage command-line OS with a
> VT100 terminal??), just use your favourite Classic command-line OS, be
> it ancient UNIX, VMS, RSX, or whatever, to send the PostScript file
> (with a command line) to your
> |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| PrintServer 40 (one of the original PS printers, same
> |time
> as LaserWriter), and you are done. Can't do that with PDF. And the
> original PostScript prior to PDF conversion is always infinitely
> better than PostScript produced by turning PDF back into PS (which is
> what I do with all PDFs that come my way, because converting back to
> PS with a command line tool is the only thing I can do with a PDF
> file).
>
> One of the first laws I will pass after my revolution is that anyone
> who publishes or sends to another person a PDF file produced by
> conversion from PostScript but withholds the PostScript source shall
> be dragged into the public square and flogged till he can't stand.
> The recipient of the PDF file would simply need to call NKVD/KGB with
> the complaint.
>
> MS

Just a suggestion of a workaround that I have sometimes used.

If you have a machine capable of running Linux or a NetBSD you can run
the X11 program Xpdf. I'm not merely saying use Xpdf to read the
document. You can also load the PDF file up in Xpdf and use Xpdf's
print function to print it out as a Postscript file (use the
print-to-file rather than print-to-postscript-printer option).

I use NetBSD to do this, which means you can do it on quite a bit of
vintage hardware, and definitely in a PeeCee-free environment. It
usually works well as a way of 'recovering the source' for information
that some people fear has had the Postscript-formatted version 'lost
forever.' It's also a way of 'stripping out restrictions' that people
lock PDF files in (print to postscript, then convert back to a new PDF,)
so long as they at least allow you to print the PDF file.

-Scott
Received on Fri Jan 28 2005 - 20:09:55 GMT