[plug] Postscript to PDF conversion

[Andrew Francis]

<snips appropriately>
On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Bernard wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 10:36:28PM +0800, Tim Bowden wrote:
> > can produce encapsulated (??) postscript files from a dwf file.  If
> 
> is a tool called epstopdf from the tetex-bin debian package which also
> seems to run Ghostscript to do it's dirty work.
> 
> An alternative might be just to open the eps in xfig and save it as
> straight postscript. 

I recall that an EPS file is basically just a postscript file, with an
encapsulated bitmap that shows what the postscript is meant to look
like. Idea being that the bitmap could be used for, say, thumbnails
or in places that can't do postscript.

Many paint packages will "open EPS files" - and they look like crap,
because the program reads a dodgy pixelated low-res bitmap, instead of
interpreting the postscript.

I believe it would be possible for a simple program to go through an EPS
file, strip out the preview bitmap, rewrite a header or two and voila,
there's your postscript. I've no idea whether such a program exists on
Linux that can output to a simple file, though.

I have a feeling, though, that given some time gazing at ghostscripts
(very, very numerous :) options, you might be able to tell it to take in
an EPS file and spit out a PDF.

Sorry that I can't be more precise.. still, HTH :)

-- 
Andrew Francis
locust at iinet.net.au