.PS

Introduction

PostScript is a programming language for describing pages, released by Adobe in 1984. A PostScript file is a program: a printer or a viewer runs it, and the program draws text, lines and images onto each page. It made desktop publishing possible and is still understood by many laser printers, though PDF, which grew out of it, has taken over most of its uses.

Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a restricted form for a single picture placed inside another document.

Structure

PostScript is stack based: values are pushed onto a stack, and operators such as moveto, lineto and show take their arguments from it. Most files follow Adobe’s Document Structuring Conventions, comments starting with %% that let software find the pages without running the program. The first line, %!PS-Adobe-3.0, declares this. Header comments such as %%Pages and %%BoundingBox end at %%EndComments, a prolog defines procedures, each page starts with %%Page:, and the file ends with %%EOF.

%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Pages: 1
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 595 842
%%EndComments
%%Page: 1 1
/Helvetica findfont 24 scalefont setfont
72 750 moveto
(Hello, page one) show
showpage
%%EOF

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