back in the good old 7.07 ghostscript days...

[Manuel Contreras]

back in the good old 7.07 ghostscript days...

we had Great results converting pdf to ps output, from the following command:

cat $stuff | /usr/local/bin/gs -sDEVICE=ljet4 -q -dNOPAUSE -r200 -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dPDFFitPage -dBATCH -sOutputFile=- - 2> /dev/null | /usr/bin/lp.hp -d $printer


now we find ourselves w/Ghostscript 8.62, which doesn't like the earlier syntax.

my work around, is to convert the file from the pdf2ps script...then perform the print in a separate step.

it works, but the output file is THREE times the size of the earlier method.

The network team is going to demand some free lunches, unless I can get 8.62 to shead some bytes.

any assistance would be appreciated.




the pdf2ps script is as follows:
#!/bin/sh
# $Id: pdf2ps,v 1.5 2007/09/11 15:24:49 Arabidopsis Exp $
# Convert PDF to PostScript.

# This definition is changed on install to match the
# executable name set in the makefile
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/usr/local/lib/hpux32:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
GS_EXECUTABLE=/usr/local/bin/gs
#gs="`dirname $0`/$GS_EXECUTABLE"
gs=$GS_EXECUTABLE
if test ! -x "$gs"; then
gs="$GS_EXECUTABLE"
fi
GS_EXECUTABLE=/usr/local/bin/gs

OPTIONS=""
while true
do
case "$1" in
-?*) OPTIONS="$OPTIONS $1" ;;
*) break ;;
esac
shift
done

if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
outfile=$2
elif [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
outfile=`basename "$1" \.pdf`.ps
else
echo "Usage: `basename $0` [-dASCII85EncodePages=false] [-dLanguageLevel=1|2|3] input.pdf [output.ps]" 1>&2
exit 1
fi

# Doing an initial 'save' helps keep fonts from being flushed between pages.
# We have to include the options twice because -I only takes effect if it
# appears before other options.
exec "$GS_EXECUTABLE" $OPTIONS -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -sDEVICE=pswrite "-sOutputFile=$outfile" $OPTIONS -c save pop -f "$1"

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Honestly, I think your current solution works.

Bigger files, but it works.

That until you learn the new syntax for ghostscript 8.62

SEP

[Manuel Contreras]

so your saying I should start saving for a few lunches :P

thanks

[Manuel Contreras]

nothing good to report, after spending some time on syntax (with new version).

wondering if another convert method would a good option...
does anyone have another pdf-to-ps solution? pdftops?


this is one of those times you wish your desk was closer to a unix printer :P

[Heironimus]

pdftops (which I think is bundled with xpdf) will probably give you smaller files than pdf2ps.

Acrobat Reader can also run non-interactively to convert pdf to smaller postscript files than pdf2ps ("acroread -toPostScript ...", acroread -h will give you the syntax).

In both cases (and with ps2pdf) you can specify "-" to write the postscript to stdout and avoid needing to create a temp file.

[Manuel Contreras]

installed yesterday, and was able to get the file down to 1/2 the size as the current GS version.

I think I could live w/those numbers :)

thank you all for your input.

manuel