Re: import of NCL's EPS output into Openoffice.org

Dear Fred,

Fred Clare wrote:
> Marcus,
>
> On Apr 16, 2008, at 2:15 AM, Marcus Letzel wrote:
>
>> Dear Fred,
>>
>> thank you for your quick reply. I posted it to the OOo user forum and
>> got promising feedback. I am grateful to the OOo forum user acknak who
>> run a series of tests on one of my NCL-produced EPS files. According
>> to his results, a merely slight change of the internal file format
>> (not to the Postscript level) of NCL's EPS output would already
>> suffice to get things going: "to move the bounding box statement from
>> the end up to the top of the file" [either using epstool or by manual
>> editing]. Please refer to
>> http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1146&start=10
>> for full details.
>>
>> Would you think it is technically possible for the NCL developer team
>> to move the bounding box statement according to these suggestions,
>> without changing the Postscript level? This would be greatly appreciated.
>
> This makes more sense to me, since any Level 3 Postscript interpreter
> should be able to handle Level 2, since Level 3 is backward compatible
> with Level 2.
>>
> Putting the bounding box information at the beginning of the file is
> something
> that we have on our list, but it requires that the information needs to
> be gathered
> during the file creation and then inserted at the beginning when the
> picture
> is terminated. Since we create the file during execution instead of
> saving it
> in a buffer and writing it at the end, we would have to read the file
> that has
> been created and then re-write it with the bounding box information
> inserted.
> Since the ps2ps and ps2epsi tools are readily available, we have not
> assigned
> a high priority to this task. My recommendation would be to write a normal
> Postscript file and then run that through ps2ps. The version of ps2ps
> that I
> have (which is two years old) also changes the Postscript level from 2
> to 3.
>
> If this becomes a big issue for people, then we will reconsider its
> priority.
>

The developers of NCL and OpenOffice.org apparently share a similar view
concerning the priority of this issue. I found out that OOo is unable to
handle the "%%BoundingBox: (atend)" statement. A search for "atend" in
the OOo Issue Tracker
(http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/pre_submission.html) shows that
this problem has been raised in Issue 9357
(http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9357) and is currently
handled as Issue 28260
(http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=28260) with (low)
priority P4.

It seems that at least three workarounds (ps2ps, ps2epsi, epstool) are
working, which is probably one of the reasons why currently neither OOo
nor NCL assign a high priority to this issue.

My thanks go to all involved for their help in identifying and solving
this issue. I continue to wait for a better solution but I am happy to
know rather easy workarounds for the meantime.

Kind regards,
Marcus

>
>
>
>> Kind regards,
>> Marcus
>>
>>
>> Fred Clare wrote:
>>> On Apr 14, 2008, at 8:12 AM, Marcus Letzel wrote:
>>>> Dear All,
>>>>
>>>> apparently Openoffice.org is unable to directly import NCL's EPS
>>>> output (header starts with "%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0") whereas it is
>>>> able to import the newer EPS format (header starts with
>>>> "%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0"). I refer to "direct import" as "without
>>>> the use of an external converter"; I'd be happy to avoid such an
>>>> additional postprocessing step.
>>>>
>>>> Is there a way to tell NCL to produce 3.0 EPS files, or any chance
>>>> NCL's EPS output format could be updated in a future NCL release?
>>> What NCL produces is in fact PostScript Level 2. Level 3 should be
>>> backward
>>> compatible with level 2. Some printers will not yet accept Level 3
>>> and that is why
>>> we hesitate to flag our Postscript files at Level 3. It is my
>>> opinion that any printer
>>> or application that honors Level 3 should accept Level 2.
>>> Fred Clare
>>

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Received on Fri Apr 18 2008 - 01:29:42 MDT