1PS2EPS(1) PS2EPS(1)
2
6 ps2eps - convert PostScript to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files
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9 ps2eps [ -f ] [ -q ] [ -N ] [ -O ] [ -n ] [ -P ] [ -c ] [ -C ] [ -m ] [
10 -B ] [ -E ] [ -s pagedim ] [ -t offset ] [ -r resolution ] [ -R +|-|^ ]
11 [ -l ] [ -g ] [ -H ] [ -d ] [ -h|--help ] [ -W ] [ -L ] [ -V|--version
12 ] [ -- ] [ psfile1 ] [ psfile2 ] [ ... ]
13
16 This manual page documents ps2eps version 1.64.
17 ps2eps is a tool (written in Perl) to produce Encapsulated PostScript
19 Files (EPS/EPSF) from usual one-paged Postscript documents. It calcu‐
20 lates correct Bounding Boxes for those EPS files and filters some spe‐
21 cial postscript command sequences that can produce erroneous results on
22 printers. EPS files are often needed for including (scalable) graphics
23 of high quality into TeX/LaTeX (or even Word) documents.
24 Without any argument, ps2eps reads from standard input and writes to
26 standard output. If filenames are given as arguments they are pro‐
27 cessed one by one and output files are written to filenames with exten‐
28 sion .eps. If input filenames have the extension .ps or .prn, this
29 extension is replaced with .eps. In all other cases .eps is appended
30 to the input filename. Please note that PostScript files for input
31 should contain only one single page (you can possibly use the psselect
32 from the psutils package to extract a single page from a document that
33 contains multiple pages).
34 If BoundingBox in output seems to be wrong, please try options --size
36 or --ignoreBB. See also section TROUBLESHOOTING.
37
39 ps2eps follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options
40 starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included
41 below.
42 -h, --help
44 Show summary of options.
45 -V, --version
47 Show version of program.
48 -f, --force
50 Force overwriting existing files. ps2eps will not overwrite
51 files by default to avoid deleting original EPS files acci‐
52 dently.
53 -q, --quiet
55 quiet operation (no output while processing files, except
56 errors).
57 -N, --noinsert
59 do not insert any postscript code. Normally a few postscript
60 instructions are added around the original postscript code by
61 ps2eps which can be turned off by this option.
62 -O, --preserveorientation
64 do not filter %%Orientation: header comment.
65 -n, --nofix
67 do not try to fix postscript code by filtering some instruc‐
68 tions.
69 -P, --removepreview
71 remove preview image (smaller file, but no preview anymore).
72 -F, --fixps
74 fix postscript code unconditionally. Otherwise, filtering is
75 usually triggered by detection of certain drivers only.
76 -c, --comments
78 preserve document structure comments.
79 -C, --clip
81 insert postscript code for clipping. Unless --nohires is speci‐
82 fied, the HiResBoundingBox (enlarged by 0.1 points) is used for
83 clipping.
84 -m, --mono
86 use black/white bitmap as base for calculation (default: off).
87 -s, --size=pagedim
89 where pagedim is a pre-defined standard page size (e.g.,
90 a4,a0,b0,letter,...) or explicitly specified in a format
91 pagedim:=XxY[cm|in], where X and Y are numbers (floating points
92 are accepted) followed by units centimeter (cm) or inch (in),
93 (default: cm). Use --size=list to list pre-defined pagesizes.
94 See also environment variable PS2EPS_SIZE.
95 -t, --translate=x,y
97 specify an x,y offset (may be negative) in postscript points
98 (1/72 dpi) for drawing. This option may be required if your
99 drawing has negative coordinates which usually lets ghostscript
100 cut the negative part of your picture, because it starts to ren‐
101 der at positive coordinates. The resulting output will also be
102 shifted.
103 -r, --resolution=dpi
105 specify a resolution in dpi (dots per inch) for drawing under
106 ghostscript. Default resolution is 144 dpi which is the double
107 of the typical 72 dpi. This option may help if there is a hard‐
108 ware dependent resolution encoded in the postscript, e.g.,
109 600dpi. Example: ps2eps -l -r 600 test.ps
110 -R, --rotate=direction
112 This option rotates the resulting EPS output. The parameter
113 direction determines the direction of rotation: + means +90
114 degrees (clockwise),- means -90 degrees (counter-clockwise), and
115 ^ means 180 degrees (up-side down).
116 -l, --loose
118 expand the original tight bounding box by one point in each
119 direction.
120 -B, --ignoreBB
122 do not use existing bounding box as page size for rendering.
123 -E, --ignoreEOF
125 do not use %%EOF as hint for end of file. Otherwise, ps2eps
126 assumes that postscript code ends after the last %%EOF comment,
127 because some drivers add trailing binary ``garbage'' code which
128 gets deleted by ps2eps by default.
129 -g, --gsbbox
131 use internal bbox device of ghostscript instead of the external
132 C program bbox. The internal bbox device of ghostscript gener‐
133 ates different values (sometimes even incorrect), so using the
134 provided bbox should be more robust. See also environment vari‐
135 able PS2EPS_GSBBOX.
136 -H, --nohires
138 do not generate a %%HiResBoundingBox comment for output.
139 -L, --license
141 show licensing information.
142 -d, --debuggs
144 show ghostscript call. This may be helpful for solving problems
145 that occur during a ghostscript call.
146 -W, --warnings
148 show warnings about sanity of generated EPS file. Certain post‐
149 script commands should not be contained in an EPS file. With
150 this option set ps2eps will issue a warning if it detects at
151 least one of them.
152
154 Based on the given postscript source code (in most cases generated by
155 some postscript printer driver) there are many potential obstacles or
156 problems that may occur when trying to create proper EPS files. Please
157 read this section carefully to be aware of common pitfalls.
158 INCOMPLETE/CLIPPED IMAGES
160 or how to determine the right size for ghostscript.
161 If you have documents that are larger than your ghostscript default
163 (usually A4 or US letter), you have to specify the page dimensions
164 explicitly using the -s option. Otherwise your EPS might be cut off
165 during rasterizing by ghostscript resulting in a wrongly calculated
166 bounding box. You can pass all pre-defined page sizes to -s that ghost‐
167 script understands. These are currently: 11x17, ledger, legal, letter,
168 lettersmall, archA, archB, archC, archD, archE a0, a1, a2, a3, a4, a5,
169 a6, a7, a8, a9, a10, isob0, isob1, isob2, isob3, isob4, isob5, isob6,
170 b0, b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, c0, c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6, jisb0, jisb1,
171 jisb2, jisb3, jisb4, jisb5, jisb6, flsa, flse, halfletter. Unfortu‐
172 nately, all sizes are currently only available in portrait orientation
173 (not landscape).
174 By default, ps2eps uses an already given %%BoundingBox from the source
176 file, which often corresponds to the size of the physical page format
177 for which the document was printed. However, you should be aware that
178 this already specified bounding box may be not correct, thus resulting
179 in a wrongly cropped (or even no usable) .eps-file. ps2eps can only do
180 as good as ghostscript does in rendering the original postscript file
181 (though ps2eps even works with negative and fractional values are con‐
182 tained in the original bounding box by using automatic translation).
183 Therefore, if the given bounding box is to small or incorrect anyway,
184 you can ignore the existing bounding box with the -B option, which will
185 cause ghostscript to use its internal default size (or use -s). How‐
186 ever, if the BoundingBox has negative coordinates, which is not allowed
187 by the specification, ps2eps will shift the output to positive values.
188 Hint: to avoid rotating the picture if you have the original drawing in
190 landscape format, you may use the ``Encapsulated Postscript'' option in
191 the printer driver which should generate an EPS file (but with a bound‐
192 ing box of the sheet size!). But some Windows printer drivers are draw‐
193 ing the image with an offset from the bottom of the portrait page, so
194 that a part of it is drawn outside the landscape oriented page. In
195 this case, you'll have to specify a square size of the page using the
196 maximum length, e.g., 29.7cm x 29.7cm for an A4 page.
197 CLIPPING
199 or why gets some of my text deleted above the included .eps file?
200 Some postscript drivers draw a white rectangle from the top left corner
202 of the page to the right lower corner of the object. This may erase
203 some or even all text above your imported/included EPS file, which is
204 very annoying. In order to prevent this, most programs have a clipping
205 option for imported .eps files (within LaTeX you can use \includegraph‐
206 ics*{}) for this purpose. If this is unfortunately not the case, you
207 can use the -C option of ps2eps which will (hopefully) do it for you.
208 Unfortunately, PScript.dll 5.2 (Windows XP) introduced new very badly
209 behaving Postscript code (initclip) which will even override the outer
210 clipping! Thus, a new filter had to be installed in ps2eps which will
211 fix it.
212 However, because most programs clip directly on the bounding box, you
214 still may loose some pixels of your image, because the bounding box is
215 described in the coarse resolution of postscript points, i.e. 72 dpi.
216 In order to prevent this, you can use the -l option or -C option (for
217 the latter, clipping by the importing program should be disabled then)
218 to allow for a 1 point larger bounding box. -C clips around a 1 point
219 enlarged bounding box and -l enlarges the bounding box values by 1
220 point (you can also combine both options).
221 INCLUDED FILTERS
223 Some postscript sequences, e.g., for using specific printer features
224 (featurebegin ...), are not working well within an .eps file, so ps2eps
225 tries to filter them out. But please note that filters for postscript
226 code may not work properly for your printer driver (ps2eps was mainly
227 tested with HP and Adobe printer drivers, although it may work for all
228 printers using the PScript.dll). In this case you can try to turn of
229 filtering by using option -n, or try to find the bad sequence in the
230 postscript code and adapt the filter rule in the ps2eps script (vari‐
231 ables $linefilter, $rangefilter_begin, $rangefilter_end; linefilter is
232 an expression for filtering single lines, rangefilter_... are expres‐
233 sions that filter all lines between a pattern matching $range‐
234 filter_begin and $rangefilter_end; drop me an e-mail with your modifi‐
235 cations). However, things may change as the printer drivers (e.g.,
236 PScript.dll) or postscript language evolve.
237 Some applications or drivers generate postscript code with leading or
239 trailing binary code, which often confuses older postscript inter‐
240 preters. ps2eps tries to remove such code, but it may sometimes make a
241 wrong guess about start and end of the real postscript code (drop me an
242 e-mail with a zipped postscript source, see section BUGS).
243 Comment lines or even blank lines are removed (which is the default to
245 make .eps files smaller), which may corrupt your output. Please check
246 the next section how to fix this. ps2eps removes blank lines and also
247 <CR> (carriage ceturn ``\r'') at the end of lines. However, nicely for‐
248 matted postscript code gives a hint by using ``%%BeginBinary'' ``%%End‐
249 Binary'' comments. When ps2eps detects these comments it will refrain
250 from any filtering action within the marked binary sections.
251 ps2eps filters also %%Orientation: comments by default (you can use
253 option -O to turn off filtering), because ghostscript may ``automagi‐
254 cally'' rotate images when generating PDF images, which is not desired
255 in most cases. Hint: you can turn off that feature in ghostscript
256 unconditionally by specifying -dAutoRotatePages=/None.
257 CORRUPTED OUTPUT
259 Some postscript code may get corrupted when comment lines or even blank
260 lines are removed (which is the default to make .eps files smaller),
261 because those files may contain encoded images which also have a % as
262 first character in a line or use a special comment as end of image
263 delimiter. If this is the case, use the -c option to prevent filtering
264 comments.
265 COLOR AND MEMORY
267 ps2eps supports colored postscript, consequently letting ghostscript
268 consume more resources for drawing its bitmap (roughly 6MBytes for an
269 A4 page). bbox is reading the bitmap line by line so it consumes only
270 minimal memory. If you experience problems with memory consumption of
271 ghostscript, you may use the -m option for using a monochrome image.
272 But this will probably result in wrongly determined bounding boxes with
273 colored images, because ghostscript has to do black/white dithering and
274 may thus suppress objects drawn in light colors.
275
277 Please note that a command line option always takes precedence over the
278 related environment variable.
279 The environment variable PS2EPS_SIZE can be used to specify a default
281 page size and take any argument that --size accepts. Examples: export
282 PS2EPS_SIZE=a0 (bash-like syntax) or setenv PS2EPS_SIZE letter (csh
283 syntax).
284 If the environment variable PS2EPS_GSBBOX is set the internal bbox
286 device of ghostscript will be used instead of the external command
287 bbox. Examples: export PS2EPS_GSBBOX=true (bash-like syntax) or setenv
288 PS2EPS_GSBBOX 1 (csh syntax).
289
291 The usual call is simply: ps2eps -l file
292 A relatively failsafe call would be (if your postscript is smaller than
294 iso b0 [100cm x 141.4cm] and you have a fast computer with enough mem‐
295 ory): ps2eps -l -B -s b0 -c -n file
296 If output is not correct try: ps2eps -l -B -s b0 -F file
298
300 ps2eps was written by Roland Bless.
301 WHY?
303 Other programs like ps2epsi do not calculate the bounding box always
304 correctly (because the values are put on the postscript stack which may
305 get corrupted by bad postscript code) or rounded it off so that clip‐
306 ping the EPS cut off some part of the image. ps2eps uses a double pre‐
307 cision resolution of 144 dpi and appropriate rounding to get a proper
308 bounding box. The internal bbox device of ghostscript generates differ‐
309 ent values (sometimes even incorrect), so using the provided bbox
310 should be more robust. However, because normal clipping has only a
311 resolution of 1/72dpi (postscript point), the clipping process may
312 still erase parts of your EPS image. In this case please use the -l
313 option to add an additional point of white space around the tight
314 bounding box.
315 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
317 Some people contributed code or suggestions to improve ps2eps. Here are
318 at least some names (sorry if I forgot your name): Christophe Druet,
319 Hans Ecke, Berend Hasselman, Erik Joergensen, Koji Nakamaru, Hans
320 Fredrik Nordhaug
321 An earlier version of this manual page was originally written by Rafael
323 Laboissiere <rafael at debian.org> for the Debian system. Thank you
324 Rafael!
325 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
327 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
328 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
329 Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.
330
332 If you experience problems, please check carefully all hints in the
333 section TROUBLESHOOTING first. Otherwise, check for an updated version
334 at <URL:http://www.tm.uka.de/~bless/ps2eps> or send a gzipped file of
335 relevant postscript source code with your error description and ps2eps
336 version number to <roland at bless.de> (please allow some time to
337 reply).
338
340 bbox (1), gs (1), ps2epsi (1)
341 24 Januar 2007 PS2EPS(1)