ps2eps
SYNOPSIS
ps2eps [ -f ] [ -q ] [ -N ] [ -O ] [ -n ] [ -P ] [ -c ] [ -C ] [ -m ] [
-B ] [ -E ] [ -s pagedim ] [ -t offset ] [ -r resolution ] [ -R +|-|^ ]
[ -l ] [ -g ] [ -H ] [ -d ] [ -h|--help ] [ -W ] [ -L ] [ -V|--version
] [ -- ] [ psfile1 ] [ psfile2 ] [ ... ]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents ps2eps version 1.64.
ps2eps is a tool (written in Perl) to produce Encapsulated PostScript
Files (EPS/EPSF) from usual one-paged Postscript documents. It calcu-
lates correct Bounding Boxes for those EPS files and filters some spe-
cial postscript command sequences that can produce erroneous results on
printers. EPS files are often needed for including (scalable) graphics
of high quality into TeX/LaTeX (or even Word) documents.
Without any argument, ps2eps reads from standard input and writes to
standard output. If filenames are given as arguments they are pro-
cessed one by one and output files are written to filenames with exten-
sion .eps. If input filenames have the extension .ps or .prn, this
extension is replaced with .eps. In all other cases .eps is appended
to the input filename. Please note that PostScript files for input
should contain only one single page (you can possibly use the psselect
from the psutils package to extract a single page from a document that
contains multiple pages).
If BoundingBox in output seems to be wrong, please try options --size
or --ignoreBB. See also section TROUBLESHOOTING.
OPTIONS
ps2eps follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options
starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included
below.
-h, --help
Show summary of options.
-V, --version
Show version of program.
-f, --force
Force overwriting existing files. ps2eps will not overwrite
files by default to avoid deleting original EPS files acci-
dently.
-q, --quiet
quiet operation (no output while processing files, except
errors).
-N, --noinsert
do not insert any postscript code. Normally a few postscript
instructions are added around the original postscript code by
-F, --fixps
fix postscript code unconditionally. Otherwise, filtering is
usually triggered by detection of certain drivers only.
-c, --comments
preserve document structure comments.
-C, --clip
insert postscript code for clipping. Unless --nohires is speci-
fied, the HiResBoundingBox (enlarged by 0.1 points) is used for
clipping.
-m, --mono
use black/white bitmap as base for calculation (default: off).
-s, --size=pagedim
where pagedim is a pre-defined standard page size (e.g.,
a4,a0,b0,letter,...) or explicitly specified in a format
pagedim:=XxY[cm|in], where X and Y are numbers (floating points
are accepted) followed by units centimeter (cm) or inch (in),
(default: cm). Use --size=list to list pre-defined pagesizes.
See also environment variable PS2EPS_SIZE.
-t, --translate=x,y
specify an x,y offset (may be negative) in postscript points
(1/72 dpi) for drawing. This option may be required if your
drawing has negative coordinates which usually lets ghostscript
cut the negative part of your picture, because it starts to ren-
der at positive coordinates. The resulting output will also be
shifted.
-r, --resolution=dpi
specify a resolution in dpi (dots per inch) for drawing under
ghostscript. Default resolution is 144 dpi which is the double
of the typical 72 dpi. This option may help if there is a hard-
ware dependent resolution encoded in the postscript, e.g.,
600dpi. Example: ps2eps -l -r 600 test.ps
-R, --rotate=direction
This option rotates the resulting EPS output. The parameter
direction determines the direction of rotation: + means +90
degrees (clockwise),- means -90 degrees (counter-clockwise), and
^ means 180 degrees (up-side down).
-l, --loose
expand the original tight bounding box by one point in each
direction.
-B, --ignoreBB
do not use existing bounding box as page size for rendering.
-E, --ignoreEOF
do not use %%EOF as hint for end of file. Otherwise, ps2eps
assumes that postscript code ends after the last %%EOF comment,
-L, --license
show licensing information.
-d, --debuggs
show ghostscript call. This may be helpful for solving problems
that occur during a ghostscript call.
-W, --warnings
show warnings about sanity of generated EPS file. Certain post-
script commands should not be contained in an EPS file. With
this option set ps2eps will issue a warning if it detects at
least one of them.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Based on the given postscript source code (in most cases generated by
some postscript printer driver) there are many potential obstacles or
problems that may occur when trying to create proper EPS files. Please
read this section carefully to be aware of common pitfalls.
INCOMPLETE/CLIPPED IMAGES
or how to determine the right size for ghostscript.
If you have documents that are larger than your ghostscript default
(usually A4 or US letter), you have to specify the page dimensions
explicitly using the -s option. Otherwise your EPS might be cut off
during rasterizing by ghostscript resulting in a wrongly calculated
bounding box. You can pass all pre-defined page sizes to -s that
ghostscript understands. These are currently: 11x17, ledger, legal,
letter, lettersmall, archA, archB, archC, archD, archE a0, a1, a2, a3,
a4, a5, a6, a7, a8, a9, a10, isob0, isob1, isob2, isob3, isob4, isob5,
isob6, b0, b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, c0, c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6, jisb0,
jisb1, jisb2, jisb3, jisb4, jisb5, jisb6, flsa, flse, halfletter.
Unfortunately, all sizes are currently only available in portrait ori-
entation (not landscape).
By default, ps2eps uses an already given %%BoundingBox from the source
file, which often corresponds to the size of the physical page format
for which the document was printed. However, you should be aware that
this already specified bounding box may be not correct, thus resulting
in a wrongly cropped (or even no usable) .eps-file. ps2eps can only do
as good as ghostscript does in rendering the original postscript file
(though ps2eps even works with negative and fractional values are con-
tained in the original bounding box by using automatic translation).
Therefore, if the given bounding box is to small or incorrect anyway,
you can ignore the existing bounding box with the -B option, which will
cause ghostscript to use its internal default size (or use -s). How-
ever, if the BoundingBox has negative coordinates, which is not allowed
by the specification, ps2eps will shift the output to positive values.
Hint: to avoid rotating the picture if you have the original drawing in
landscape format, you may use the ``Encapsulated Postscript'' option in
the printer driver which should generate an EPS file (but with a bound-
ing box of the sheet size!). But some Windows printer drivers are draw-
option for imported .eps files (within LaTeX you can use \includegraph-
ics*{}) for this purpose. If this is unfortunately not the case, you
can use the -C option of ps2eps which will (hopefully) do it for you.
Unfortunately, PScript.dll 5.2 (Windows XP) introduced new very badly
behaving Postscript code (initclip) which will even override the outer
clipping! Thus, a new filter had to be installed in ps2eps which will
fix it.
However, because most programs clip directly on the bounding box, you
still may loose some pixels of your image, because the bounding box is
described in the coarse resolution of postscript points, i.e. 72 dpi.
In order to prevent this, you can use the -l option or -C option (for
the latter, clipping by the importing program should be disabled then)
to allow for a 1 point larger bounding box. -C clips around a 1 point
enlarged bounding box and -l enlarges the bounding box values by 1
point (you can also combine both options).
INCLUDED FILTERS
Some postscript sequences, e.g., for using specific printer features
(featurebegin ...), are not working well within an .eps file, so ps2eps
tries to filter them out. But please note that filters for postscript
code may not work properly for your printer driver (ps2eps was mainly
tested with HP and Adobe printer drivers, although it may work for all
printers using the PScript.dll). In this case you can try to turn of
filtering by using option -n, or try to find the bad sequence in the
postscript code and adapt the filter rule in the ps2eps script (vari-
ables $linefilter, $rangefilter_begin, $rangefilter_end; linefilter is
an expression for filtering single lines, rangefilter_... are expres-
sions that filter all lines between a pattern matching $range-
filter_begin and $rangefilter_end; drop me an e-mail with your modifi-
cations). However, things may change as the printer drivers (e.g.,
PScript.dll) or postscript language evolve.
Some applications or drivers generate postscript code with leading or
trailing binary code, which often confuses older postscript inter-
preters. ps2eps tries to remove such code, but it may sometimes make a
wrong guess about start and end of the real postscript code (drop me an
e-mail with a zipped postscript source, see section BUGS).
Comment lines or even blank lines are removed (which is the default to
make .eps files smaller), which may corrupt your output. Please check
the next section how to fix this. ps2eps removes blank lines and also
<CR> (carriage ceturn ``\r'') at the end of lines. However, nicely for-
matted postscript code gives a hint by using ``%%BeginBinary'' ``%%End-
Binary'' comments. When ps2eps detects these comments it will refrain
from any filtering action within the marked binary sections.
ps2eps filters also %%Orientation: comments by default (you can use
option -O to turn off filtering), because ghostscript may ``automagi-
cally'' rotate images when generating PDF images, which is not desired
in most cases. Hint: you can turn off that feature in ghostscript
unconditionally by specifying -dAutoRotatePages=/None.
CORRUPTED OUTPUT
ghostscript, you may use the -m option for using a monochrome image.
But this will probably result in wrongly determined bounding boxes with
colored images, because ghostscript has to do black/white dithering and
may thus suppress objects drawn in light colors.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Please note that a command line option always takes precedence over the
related environment variable.
The environment variable PS2EPS_SIZE can be used to specify a default
page size and take any argument that --size accepts. Examples: export
PS2EPS_SIZE=a0 (bash-like syntax) or setenv PS2EPS_SIZE letter (csh
syntax).
If the environment variable PS2EPS_GSBBOX is set the internal bbox
device of ghostscript will be used instead of the external command
bbox. Examples: export PS2EPS_GSBBOX=true (bash-like syntax) or setenv
PS2EPS_GSBBOX 1 (csh syntax).
EXAMPLES
The usual call is simply: ps2eps -l file
A relatively failsafe call would be (if your postscript is smaller than
iso b0 [100cm x 141.4cm] and you have a fast computer with enough mem-
ory): ps2eps -l -B -s b0 -c -n file
If output is not correct try: ps2eps -l -B -s b0 -F file
AUTHOR
ps2eps was written by Roland Bless.
WHY?
Other programs like ps2epsi do not calculate the bounding box always
correctly (because the values are put on the postscript stack which may
get corrupted by bad postscript code) or rounded it off so that clip-
ping the EPS cut off some part of the image. ps2eps uses a double pre-
cision resolution of 144 dpi and appropriate rounding to get a proper
bounding box. The internal bbox device of ghostscript generates differ-
ent values (sometimes even incorrect), so using the provided bbox
should be more robust. However, because normal clipping has only a
resolution of 1/72dpi (postscript point), the clipping process may
still erase parts of your EPS image. In this case please use the -l
option to add an additional point of white space around the tight
bounding box.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some people contributed code or suggestions to improve ps2eps. Here are
at least some names (sorry if I forgot your name): Christophe Druet,
Hans Ecke, Berend Hasselman, Erik Joergensen, Koji Nakamaru, Hans
Fredrik Nordhaug
An earlier version of this manual page was originally written by Rafael
Laboissiere <rafael at debian.org> for the Debian system. Thank you
Rafael!
reply).
SEE ALSO
bbox (1), gs (1), ps2epsi (1)
24 Januar 2007 PS2EPS(1)
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