- This topic has 3 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 16 years, 7 months ago by
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About 14 years ago I wrote applications that created postscript files so let me comment about postscript right quick. Postscript is a programming language designed to be device independent, whereas something like PCL is another popular language specific to HP printers.
So think of a postscript file as a standalone script that gets interpreted by the printer’s postscript driver at run time when you print the postscript file.
This may not be news to you but it is worth knowing because that means it is likely each post script file will have enough variation that parsing it to obtain the desired information could be challenging.
I would equate it to screen scraping from a screen that might keep changing the layout on you.
If possible I suggest investigating getting a copy of the data before it is stored in the postscript file.
When I did write applications to dynamically write postscript files a very useful tool I used in that endeavor was called ghostscript (probably the GNU version but it was too long ago for me to clearly remember).
Ghostscript allowed me to display my postscript files to the screen instead of to a printer which helped shorten my development effort.
I find what you are considering to be very interesting but would have to fry too many brain cells to offer any more help at this time.
Good luck and it will be interesting to hear how it goes.
Russ Ross
RussRoss318@gmail.com -
Extracting the text may get you halfway. There are still issues: http://www.postscript.org/FAQs/language/node36.html This tool might help:
http://www.nzdl.org/html/prescript.html http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=postscript+to+text+converter&btnG=Google+Search I would echo Russ by suggesting you get the data before it’s encoded. Good luck!
Rob Abbott
Director, Product Management - Infor Cloverleaf -
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