[tex-k] dvips: BeginPaperSize in postscript DSC

[Jean-François Mertens]

On 10 Nov 2006, at 18:13, pierre.mackay wrote:

> The 3.0 Structuring Conventions are worth even more attention, and  
> we should probably be using
>
> @+ ! %%DocumentMedia: <whatever>
>
> instead of
>
> @+ ! %%DocumentPaperSizes

Wonderful !
This implies, if I understand correctly, you suggest to replace the  
first line in the output of dvips :
%!PS-Adobe-2.0
by:
%!PS-Adobe-3.0

(Cf, eg, loc. cit. , p. 17 :
"A conforming document is recognized by the header comment
%!PS-Adobe-3.0
and ..."
; also at many other places _ I understand this to mean that such  
comments
are maybe "non-conforming" , or whatever, if preceded by "%!PS- 
Adobe-2.0", and/or
when run on a device that understands only level 2 PostScript.)

This might have some other implications within dvips, that I'm not  
aware of...

But I would a priori guess that indeed currently almost all devices  
should understand level 3.

This does not alleviate my concern however about a ps2pdf(14) _ or gs  
_ that does not
interpret correctly all existing documents (at least, created by  
dvips): a ps file has to be
able to serve as an electronic "document" , still useable several  
decades (or centuries...)
later _ as a paper document _ .
So I think gs should still interpret correctly documents starting  
with "%!PS-Adobe-2.0" _
or else we'll need another tool taking as input a ps file of any  
level or age, and translating
it to a "current ps" format...

> I regret that there is no way of cancelling the David Fuchs 1 inch  
> margin by using %%BeginFeature . . . %%EndFeature, but it seems
> impossible.  It would be nice to be able to write pdfs with no area  
> outside the cropmarks using a single -t flag, but -O is not too
> burdensome.
Thanks again, for the pointer to "-O" ! several times be bothered  
about this issue...

Best,

Jean-Francois

PS: who is David Fuchs ? (and a pointer to that history ... ?)