[R] postscript problems (landscape orientation)

[(Ted Harding)]

On 21-May-09 23:02:28, David Scott wrote:
> Well most people deal with that problem by not using Acrobat to
> read .pdf files. On linux you can use evince or xpdf. On windows
> just use gsview32. Those readers don't lock the .pdf.
> 
> I am with Peter and generally go straight to pdf these days. The only 
> reason for going through postscript is if you want to use psfrag.
> 
> David Scott

Going off at a tangent to the original query, I would say that
this is too limited a view! For one thing, PostScript (in its
Encasulated manifestation) is readily imported and re-scalable
by software which does not import PFF. Also, PS is an editable
plain-text file (even though there may be chunks in hexadecimal
for some graphics -- but it's still ASCII). One thing which I
quite often do is edit the "%%BoundingBox: " line to improve the
framing of the graphic -- and viewing it in ghostscript with
"watch" mode on as one edits, one can easily adjust things to
a satisfactory visual effect.

If you know what you are doing, you can if you wish move things
around, or add or delete things (especially bits of text) by
using any plain-text editor on the PostScript file.

Finally (though this may be a symptom of serious masochsim on
my part), if I download a PDF in which the author has plotted
the data, after I "print to file" in PostScript from Acrobat
Reader I can usually obtain a very close approximation to the
original data values by extracting the PS coordinates of the
plotted points (and axis tick-marks) from the PostScript file.

"The only reason for going through postscript is if you want
to use psfrag" -- or psnup and/or psbook or ... 

Ted.


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Date: 22-May-09                                       Time: 00:31:32
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