What is PostScript?

Postscript is a programming language designed specifically for printing graphics and text. It is independent of the media being printed, whether you print on paper, film, or on the screen. It is a page description language, similar to the HTML language.

Postscript was proposed by Adobe in 1985 and was first applied to Apple's LaserWriter printer. The main goal of Postscript is to provide a device-independent language that can easily describe images. Being device independent means that an image does not need to be described by the characteristics of any specific device (for example, the resolution of the printer), so this description can be used for printing on other Po stscript printers without any modification.

Postscript as a language, has its own set of grammar and formatting rules, if you are interested in this, please visit Adobe's website: http://, Adobe company has a very comprehensive information.

Postscript files are stored as text, similar to HTML files. You can see this by simply opening a Postscript file with WordPad, as shown in Figure 1. The Postscript file itself describes the features and parameters of the image to be displayed or printed in the Postscript language. When the Postscript file is displayed or printed, it is interpreted and executed by the Postscript interpreter, and the specific printing or display is performed to obtain the desired image. . Figure 2 shows the Postscript file in Figure 1 in a Postscript file reader. You can see that the Postscript file is interpreted and displayed, resulting in a colored page.

Postscript files have many advantages over other formats. The above mentioned device independence is a very important point. Postscript files also have the advantage of being independent of the operating system platform. Because many of the Unix graphics environments themselves have support for Postscript as part of the core, you can read and print P ostscript files regardless of whether you are using the Windows operating system or the Unix operating system. This makes communication easier. Because Postscript files are stored in text, the files are small and suitable for transmission over the Internet. There is also a unique advantage in printing and displaying on Postscript devices (printers, monitors) for the best results.

There are several ways to generate Postscript files:

(1) You can refer to Postscript's language format, and write a Postscript file directly with your text editor as needed. Of course, if the file is more complicated, the workload is not small, and you must be familiar with the syntax of Postscript.

(2) You can use special Postscript file editing software or some text, image editing software to provide the function to generate Postscript file;

(3) There is also a simplest way to add a Postscript printer (virtual) to your operating system, and then in the text editor or graphic editor, the images you need are printed by that Postscript printer. In a file, the resulting file is the Postscript file you want!

Source: Ke Yin Network