Programming in PostScript^{(R)}

Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Room W20-557; x3-7788 IAP 1991

                          Chee Chew (web@athena.mit.edu)

Syllabus

1-2  What is PS? – Using and accessing PS – PS programming model –

Basic Commands – Errors

2-3  Procedures – Scoping – Control constructs –

Using Fonts – Transforms

3-4  Bitmaps – Arrays – Dictionaries
4-5  Ask away! – EPS – Nasty Tricks

Resources

In addition to the SIPB (Room W20-557, phone x3-7788), the following resources are available:

Books

The Blue Book. PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook, (Adobe Systems Inc., 1985) is a useful text for beginners. It covers much of the same material as this course.

The Green Book. PostScript Language Program Design, (Adobe Systems Inc., 1988) is an intermediate-level text aimed at developing programming skills. We feel that practice is more useful (and less expensive) than this book.

The Red Book. PostScript Language Reference Manual, (Adobe Systems Inc., 1985) is an indispensable and well-organized reference text. If you find yourself continuing with PostScript, you will probably want a copy of this book.

Athena Resources

/mit/postscript is a world-accessible file system for sharing PostScript hacks. There are lots of various sources there to copy and use. Additionally, the file system is world-writable so you can add your own PostScript hacks. To access it, simply attach

postscript. The handouts for this class are in /mit/postscript/iap91.

pshack is a discuss meeting for PostScript. If you’ve never used discuss, stop by the SIPB office (W20-557) and ask for a copy of Using Discuss. To add the meeting, use

the following discuss command: am bloom-beacon.mit.edu:/usr/spool/discuss/pshack.

xps is an X-previewer for PostScript files. It is still under development, so it is not perfectly debugged, but most of the kinks have been worked out. Type man xps with the SIPB filesystem attached (attach sipb) for more information.

gs is an X-previwer for PostScript by the Free Software Foundation. It, too, is under development, but seems to perform better and faster than xps. To get to it, type: add

gnu; gs

comp.lang.postscript Usenet netnews carries some PostScript relevant discussions in comp.lang.postscript. To access this, simply add comp.lang.postscript to your subscription list by issuing the command g comp.lang.postscript. If you’ve never used netnews before stop by the SIPB office (W20-557) and ask for a copy of NetNews: A One-Page Guide to Usenet.

Sipb Resources

Yap is a postscript interpreter on the NeXT machine. It’s great for postscript hacking! It’s fast, and it’s available for you to use in the SIPB office.