NAME¶
ps2eps - convert PostScript to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files
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 ] [
-a ] [
-W ] [
-L ] [
-V|--version ] [
-- ] [
psfile1 ] [
psfile2 ] [
... ]
DESCRIPTION¶
This manual page documents
ps2eps version 1.68.
ps2eps is a tool (written in Perl) to produce Encapsulated PostScript
Files (EPS/EPSF) from usual one-paged Postscript documents. It calculates
correct Bounding Boxes for those EPS files and filters some special 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 processed one by one and
output files are written to filenames with extension
.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
accidently.
- -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
ps2eps which can be turned off by this option.
- -O, --preserveorientation
- do not filter %%Orientation: header comment.
- -n, --nofix
- do not try to fix postscript code by filtering some
instructions.
- -P, --removepreview
- remove preview image (smaller file, but no preview
anymore).
- -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 specified, 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:=
Xx Y[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 render 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 hardware 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, because some drivers add trailing binary ``garbage'' code which
gets deleted by ps2eps by default.
- -g, --gsbbox
- use internal bbox device of ghostscript instead of the
external C program bbox. The internal bbox device of ghostscript
generates different values (sometimes even incorrect), so using the
provided bbox should be more robust. See also environment variable
PS2EPS_GSBBOX.
- -H, --nohires
- do not generate a %%HiResBoundingBox comment for
output.
- -a, --accuracy
- increase the accuracy by turning subsample antialiasing on
(may be slower)
- -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
postscript 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 orientation
(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 contained 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). However, 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 bounding box of
the sheet size!). But some Windows printer drivers are drawing the image with
an offset from the bottom of the portrait page, so that a part of it is drawn
outside the landscape oriented page. In this case, you'll have to specify a
square size of the page using the maximum length, e.g., 29.7cm x 29.7cm for an
A4 page.
CLIPPING¶
or why gets some of my text deleted above the included
.eps file?
Some postscript drivers draw a white rectangle from the top left corner of the
page to the right lower corner of the object. This may erase some or even all
text above your imported/included EPS file, which is very annoying. In order
to prevent this, most programs have a clipping option for imported
.eps
files (within LaTeX you can use \includegraphics*{}) 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
(variables $linefilter, $rangefilter_begin, $rangefilter_end; linefilter is an
expression for filtering single lines, rangefilter_... are expressions that
filter all lines between a pattern matching $rangefilter_begin and
$rangefilter_end; drop me an e-mail with your modifications). 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 interpreters.
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 formatted
postscript code gives a hint by using ``%%BeginBinary'' ``%%EndBinary''
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
``automagically'' 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¶
Some postscript code may get corrupted when comment lines or even blank lines
are removed (which is the default to make .eps files smaller), because those
files may contain encoded images which also have a % as first character in a
line or use a special comment as end of image delimiter. If this is the case,
use the
-c option to prevent filtering comments.
COLOR AND MEMORY¶
ps2eps supports colored postscript, consequently letting ghostscript
consume more resources for drawing its bitmap (roughly 6MBytes for an A4
page).
bbox is reading the bitmap line by line so it consumes only
minimal memory. If you experience problems with memory consumption of
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.
Another option in case of memory problems and too long run times is to use the
much more memory efficient internal ghostscript bbox by using the
-g
option.
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 memory):
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 clipping the EPS
cut off some part of the image.
ps2eps uses a double precision
resolution of 144 dpi and appropriate rounding to get a proper bounding box.
The internal bbox device of ghostscript generates different 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,
Michael Sharpe. Special thanks goes to Michael Sharpe from UCSD who suggested
a lot of useful features for ps2eps and who fixed bbox to become more precise
and robust.
An earlier version of this manual page was originally written by Rafael
Laboissiere <rafael at debian.org> for the Debian system. Thank you
Rafael!
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no
Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.
BUGS¶
If you experience problems, please check carefully all hints in the section
TROUBLESHOOTING first. Otherwise, check for an updated version at
<
URL:http://www.tm.uka.de/~bless/ps2eps> or send a gzipped file of
relevant postscript source code with your error description and
ps2eps
version number to <roland at bless.de> (please allow some time to
reply).
SEE ALSO¶
bbox (1), gs (1), ps2epsi (1)