Wordstar DOS 7.0 ==> Adobe Acrobat.

Started by ostrowlaw, May 07, 2003, 02:27:58 AM

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Doug_K

#15
Thank you so much for this help, especially Deedee.

I have now got the Generic Postscript PDF working and found a free distiller on the internet.

The only problem is with Extended Characters -- I use several of them and they are not being read, so I am looking for help with that.

Mr. Ostrolaw also was helpful and sent me a file named Adobe.pdf which he says has been massaged for this process.  Possibly it would be better but I can't get it to work.  I put it in the WS directory and it immediately showed up as a printer option.  But when I try to use it, it says "can't print - pdf or driver files not found"

Thanks --              :-/

PGAGA

#16
Monday, February 21, 2005

All the PS printers drivers which came with WS7 are deliberately deficient.  As far as I can tell, it had to do with memory limits for the distillation process--the driver which I am about to reference will not work on my 16 meg Win3.1 laptop.

To get full use of extended characters you need my customized version of Roger Allen's PS driver.  Roger added curly quotes.  I have added support the Euro, colour support, and support for extended characters.  The driver is found at:

http://www.glinx.com/~grifwood/PSDRVPGA.ZIP

My personal version of this driver (I have added additional Type 1 fonts) is my default printer driver.  I use GS to print using the system printer on all my systems (OS/2, Win3.1, Win98SE, WinME).  On my WinME and Win98SE systems, I have a duplicate of my default printer driver called FreeDist.pdf.  It has been modified to send the printer output to the folder watched by FreedDist (a free front end to Ghostscript), using the file name.  A PDF with the file name is then automatically created.

Phil

Doug_K

#17
I tried the material offered by Phil  -  what I did, I put the files 4039pga.pdf and wsprolga.ps into my WS directory.  Sure enough I had a new printer and it worked.  

But, when I ran my PS file through a distiller, the extended characters still didn't appear.  

Where before I got question marks, this time I got blank space.  (The ones I use are a solid rectangle, a dash-type line, and a bullet-type triangle)

Thanks for any help - I'll keep trying.

Doug



PGAGA

#18
Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Send me a copy of the file (or another file with the characters in them) and I will see if I can add them to the driver.

Phil
grifwood@glinx.com

Henry_Bartlett

#19
Note for PGAGA

You may need to look at the WinAPI OEMtoChar function

PGAGA

#20
Thursday 24 February 2005

Well, the good news is that the characters are accessed by my driver with the Courier font.  The bad news is that you need to have a version of the Courier font with the extended characters installed.

For some reason most PS fonts do not come with desired characters as part of their font set.  I could not get them recognized on my Win98SE system in Halifax.  But coming home to Kentville last night, the characters were there on my Warp system.  OS/2 ships with font versions containing the characters.  

I suspect that there may be a modification to the Prologue file which would generate the characters for other fonts, and I will post an inquiry to the Postscript news group about how to do it.

Phil

deedee

#21
QuoteThank you so much for this help, especially Deedee.

I have now got the Generic Postscript PDF working and found a free distiller on the internet.

The only problem is with Extended Characters -- I use several of them and they are not being read, so I am looking for help with that.
I waited to respond because I wanted to see which extended characters you needed and if Phil's driver took care of the problem for you. I knew that Phil's driver has included typographical characters, but I don't use them with WS particularly, so the generic PS drivers work well for me.

My initial thought on this was to ask you how do you get them to print from your printer. If your printer is both PCL and PS in nature, you may be able to get your characters by using its PS driver. To do this, just install its PS version from the printer database. For example, I use an HP Laserjet 5MP. I have it installed as a PCL printer (and I use this one to physically print to), but I also have it installed as a PS driver so that I can access the fonts it comes with (which happens to include the extended characters I need). I use the PS version when I create a file for distilling. Did you try installing the Apple Laserwriter to see if it has the extended characters you want?
WordStar Users Group: http://www.wordstar2.com
WordStar Users Group Mailing Lists: http://wordstar2.com/mailman/listinfo
Reg. Linux User #327485

ostrowlaw

#22
Well, glad to hear that you at least go the thing going with generic print capabilities  :) .  The Adobe driver I sent to you is probably the same one you are using now, but I adapted it to the HPIII printer.  It obviously didn't like the HP4.

As far as advanced printing fonts, etc., I can't help you, because I just use basic text fonts which work fine for me.

Sorry and good luck

Alan

PGAGA

#23
Thursday 24 February 2005

This has been an interesting exercise.  First, I discovered that the ability to display the characters in a PDF is only available in my personal custom built file.  The one downloaded from my Web site will not work.  I have created a new one and will upload in a day or so.  What I did to create it, I have no idea.

Second, I have yet get the file to distill under Windows.  It only works under OS/2 even with the OS/2 fonts on the Windows system.  I am beginning to suspect this is a DOS code page issue.

More playing to be done.

Phil

PGAGA

#24
Saturday, February 26, 2005

Success!  I now have a version of my driver which correctly puts the extended characters into the PS file.  I had to hex edit a driver to get it to work.  Likely next week I will post an update to my driver.

Even better, using the OS/2 font files I was able to get PDF creation on Windows using Ghostscript 7.06.  All I did was copy the OS/2 fonts files into the GS\Fonts folder.

The glitch in all this is that the fonts come with Warp (or at least the free fixpack for Warp).  But there should be lots of cheap copies of Warp around for those needing these fonts.

Later I will develop a detailed how to for getting this work transparentingly.  In the case of Windows I use FreeDist.exe to monitor a folder to which I send the PS file for distilling and automatic PDF creation.

Phil

Doug_K

#25

I have mostly accomplished what I needed, at least for the time being, and wish to thank those generous persons who have helped me.  The main point was learning that there are printers that will do a good job of converting a Wordstar document to a .PS file, when then goes through a distiller to become a PDF.

I have still not found a way to convert the extended characters -- I use several of them including bullets and a couple others in creating a sort of graphic design look for my reports.  Deedee is oriented toward simple, practical suggestions which I really appreciate - on this topic, however, I have now tried the HP4 PS and the Apple laserwriter PS printer files, and they did not convert the extended characters.  Phil is way into this and other problems and has some solutions but it appears they are on another platform, and he is fiddling to make them useful more widely, and I am looking forard to see what he comes up with.

I do commercial real estate appraisal reports and I had to get this one off, so I found ways to just take out the extended characters and replace them in a way that looks similar.  It would be nice to find a better solution, as I expect to find more and more mortgage lenders and other clients wanting to receive a digital copy of the appraisal report.  

Thanks again --  I'll keep watching this space !!

Doug Kingsbury      opalo28@yahoo.com



PGAGA

#26
Wednesday, March 02, 2005

The good news is that I now seemlessly can process Doug's files on my Win98SE and WinME systems from WS to PDF.  The problem is that I use commercial fonts from Warp to so do.

Phil

PGAGA

#27
Thursday 03 March 2005

I have uploaded an updated versions of my version of Roger Allen's PS printer driver.

    http://www.glinx.com/~grifwood/PSDRVPGA.ZIP

Graphical characters are enabled in this version.  But, these characters are not included by default in Type 1 fonts.  In fact the only one's which I know contain them come with OS/2.

Phil

PGAGA

Thursday 31 March 2005

Following a discussion on the Postscript Newsgroup I have updated  my PS driver.

http://www.glinx.com/~grifwood/PSDRVPGA.ZIP

The good news is that there is a free IBM Courier font which enables embedding of the extended characters in PDFs.

Phil