James B. Byrne spake the following on 2/28/2007 10:26 AM:
I have been attempting to create a custom fax cover sheet for a hylafax web front end called avantfax. It requires as input an encapsulated postscript file conaining the glyph definitions and the text to be subsituted as strings having the form XXXX-to-variable or XXXX-from-variable.
I have been trying to create a valid eps file using a varitiy of methods with no great succes. However, I ahve uncovered a few bits of information from my explorations and I wonder if someone here with greater postscript exprience than I might help:
What am getting from printing to a file using an applewritter ppd is this:
---> snip %%Page: 1 1 %%PageBoundingBox: 0 0 612 792 %%BeginPageSetup % [{ %%BeginFeature: *PageSize Letter <</PageSize[612 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice %%EndFeature } stopped cleartomark %%EndPageSetup gsave [0.24 0 0 -0.24 0 792] concat gsave 237 278 moveto 0 setgray (Courier-iso1252) cvn findfont 50 -50 matrix scale makefont setfont <585858582D746F2D6661782D6E756D626572> [30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 0] xshow grestore grestore showpage %%PageTrailer
%%Trailer %%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792 %%Pages: 1 <---
What this tells me is that the string that I wish to use is bounded by the <> characters and are present as a set of array indices. So 58 (hex) maps to the 98 entry of the array and this gives the letter /X. 2D likewise maps to 46 and this is /hyphen. 74 maps to index 116 and this is letter /t and so on. The problem is that the application software is looking to replace the sting "XXXX-to-fax-number" and not <585858582D746F2D6661782D6E756D626572>. Is there an alternative form of prepresentation within an eps document to display using the actual ascii text and not use these lookups?
I have noted that when documents are created using Acrobat that I get different commands that use ASCII text strings, but that these are broken in arpitratry places (presumably to allow expact glyph positioning on the image irrespective of font metrics on the target device).
What I want to have in the final .ps file is something approximating this:
---> (Courier-iso1252) cvn findfont 50 -50 matrix scale makefont setfont "XXXX-to-fax-number" [30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 0] xshow <---
Regards,
Have you looked at the cups header sheets as an example to work with? They have some variable substitution in them. They might give you a hint. AFAIR they are pure postscript, but maybe a start.