| Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17835] |
Tue, 16 November 1999 00:00  |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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Hi Folks,
There has been some discussion on this newsgroup lately
of how to produce a decent PostScript preview image, so
you could import the image into a Word or Powerpoint
document and see something reasonable. I've written
an article on this topic that might shed some light on
the subject, at least for those of you working on Windows
machines. (Ninety percent of you, if my recent figures from
Microsoft are any indication. :-)
http://www.dfanning.com/tips/postscript_preview.html
Note that the page may be a bit slow to load. The images
are larger than I like them to be, but I didn't use image
compression because I wanted the quality of the output
(or, frankly, absolute lack of it in the case of IDL's
preview image) to be apparent between the three different
methods I illustrate.
The first method is IDL's own, using the Preview keyword.
The second involves using Ghostview, as suggested on this
newsgroup by Liam Gumley, and the third method uses Adobe
Acrobat and was suggested to me by Larry Ashim.
I'll let you decide which method you prefer. :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17882 is a reply to message #17835] |
Thu, 18 November 1999 00:00  |
Mark Hadfield
Messages: 783
Registered: May 1995
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Senior Member |
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Martin Schultz <m218003@modell3.dkrz.de> wrote in message
news:80tr2m$9p6$1@rzsun03.rrz.uni-hamburg.de...
> In article <MPG.129b25fdfb87c7cf989967@news.frii.com>,
> davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
>> ...
>> http://www.dfanning.com/tips/postscript_preview.html
>>
> Nice article! Only one little bit of info missing: what's the file
> size for the various versions? I remember some examples when a
> preview image would blow up the eps file considerably - and one
> could be tempted to conceive that the wonderful TIFF image is somewhat
> larger than the others.
A good question, but it's probably a bit much to ask David to address it in
his summary, as the answer is rather complicated.
The main variables are the resolution & colour depth of the preview image,
of course. Some of the methods that David describes let you control these
variables, in which case the answer to your question is "how large do you
want the file to be?". I mentioned epstool in a previous post and I have
volunteered to contribute some text about it to add to David's summary--when
I get around to it :-). This lets you control resolution, colour depth and
format of the preview image via command-line switches. I may do some
experiments and report the results--when I get around to it.
---
Mark Hadfield
m.hadfield@niwa.cri.nz http://katipo.niwa.cri.nz/~hadfield/
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research
PO Box 14-901, Wellington, New Zealand
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17892 is a reply to message #17835] |
Wed, 17 November 1999 00:00 |
wgallery
Messages: 32
Registered: December 1998
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Member |
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Some additional notes from my experience in using GhostView to add a
preview. I am running IDL on a Sun Ultra, Solaris 2.7 and running
Ghostview and Office 97 on an NT 4.0.
You can control the resolution of the preview: under Media: Display
Settings, set Resolution. I have found that 150 (dpi) provides a
preview image that displays quit well on screen, e.g. in a Powerpoint
presentation.
Ghostview offers the following preview format options:
interchange: preview does not display
tiff 4: preview in black and white only,
tiff 6: preview in color
tiff 6 packbits: preview in color
Windows metafile: preview in color
The size of the epsi file may be many times that of the original ps
file. However, when inserted into a Word97 or Powerpoint document, the
increase in the size of the file is quite modest (apparently the preview
is compressed upon insertion.)
Here are the relative sizes for a simple line plot in color:
-rw-r--r-- 1 rs 7167 Nov 19 1999 fig.ps
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rs 202213 Nov 18 1999 fig_inter.epsi
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rs 752345 Nov 17 1999 fig_meta.epsi
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rs 104847 Nov 17 1999 fig_tiff4.epsi
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rs 740973 Nov 17 1999 fig_tiff6.epsi
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rs 52336 Nov 17 1999 fig_tiff6_pack.epsi
Be aware that for all except the interchange preview (which is worthless
anyway), Ghostview adds some binary data at the beginning of the file so
that it can no longer be displayed by ghostscript or be sent to a
postscript printer. Also, the previews are binary.
In article <3831AEC1.3BBA2762@ssec.wisc.edu>,
Liam Gumley <Liam.Gumley@ssec.wisc.edu> wrote:
> David Fanning wrote:
>> There has been some discussion on this newsgroup lately
>> of how to produce a decent PostScript preview image, so
>> you could import the image into a Word or Powerpoint
>> document and see something reasonable. I've written
>> an article on this topic that might shed some light on
>> the subject, at least for those of you working on Windows
>> machines. (Ninety percent of you, if my recent figures from
>> Microsoft are any indication. :-)
>>
>> http://www.dfanning.com/tips/postscript_preview.html
>
> David, thanks for the nice write up.
>
>> The first method is IDL's own, using the Preview keyword.
>> The second involves using Ghostview, as suggested on this
>> newsgroup by Liam Gumley, and the third method uses Adobe
>> Acrobat and was suggested to me by Larry Ashim.
>> I'll let you decide which method you prefer. :-)
>
> I've found GSView to be an indispensable tool for checking that my IDL
> Postscript output really looks the way I intended it to look, without
> having to print a darn thing. And it adds nice preview images as well!
> Check out
> http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
>
> Cheers,
> Liam.
>
> --
> Liam E. Gumley
> Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison
> http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley
>
Cheers,
Bill Gallery
--
William O.Gallery
wgallery@aer.com
Atmospheric & Environmental Research, Inc.
840 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139
www.aer.com
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17904 is a reply to message #17835] |
Wed, 17 November 1999 00:00 |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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Martin Schultz (m218003@modell3.dkrz.de) writes:
> Nice article! Only one little bit of info missing: what's the file
> size for the various versions? I remember some examples when a
> preview image would blow up the eps file considerably - and one
> could be tempted to conceive that the wonderful TIFF image is somewhat
> larger than the others.
Yes, the file size information might be helpful.
As you might expect, the IDL preview method doesn't
create a very big file, since it apparently throws
away most of the information you care about. :-(
The resulting EPS file is 53 KB in size.
Interestingly, the GSView method, when you create
a Windows metafile preview, is even smaller, although
the preview image looks reasonably good in Microsoft
Word. That file is only 41 KB. But, remember, this
is a file that Framemaker couldn't load. The EPS
file with the TIFF preview image is bigger, of
course, but not terribly so. It is 254 KB in size.
The Acrobat method was somewhere in the middle.
It created an EPS preview file of 157 KB. Since
this was a Level 1 PostScript ASCII file, I also
tried a Level 2 PostScript binary file. That file
is 141 KB and the preview quality is the same.
If I get a minute I'll add the numbers to the
article.
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17907 is a reply to message #17835] |
Wed, 17 November 1999 00:00 |
m218003
Messages: 56
Registered: August 1999
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Member |
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In article <MPG.129b25fdfb87c7cf989967@news.frii.com>,
davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
> Hi Folks,
>
> There has been some discussion on this newsgroup lately
> of how to produce a decent PostScript preview image, so
> you could import the image into a Word or Powerpoint
> document and see something reasonable. I've written
> an article on this topic that might shed some light on
> the subject, at least for those of you working on Windows
> machines. (Ninety percent of you, if my recent figures from
> Microsoft are any indication. :-)
you may want to get your numbers from RSI rather than Mirosoft ;-)
>
> http://www.dfanning.com/tips/postscript_preview.html
>
Nice article! Only one little bit of info missing: what's the file
size for the various versions? I remember some examples when a
preview image would blow up the eps file considerably - and one
could be tempted to conceive that the wonderful TIFF image is somewhat
larger than the others.
I know, I know: GB/$ is a monotonously increasing function - yet, there
are still some dinosaurs who may want to send files on floppies or who
have steam-powered computers ...
Cheers,
Martin
--
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ [[[[[[[
[[ Dr. Martin Schultz Max-Planck-Institut fuer Meteorologie [[
[[ Bundesstr. 55, 20146 Hamburg [[
[[ phone: +49 40 41173-308 [[
[[ fax: +49 40 41173-298 [[
[[ martin.schultz@dkrz.de [[
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ [[[[[[[
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17911 is a reply to message #17835] |
Wed, 17 November 1999 00:00 |
Mark Hadfield
Messages: 783
Registered: May 1995
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Senior Member |
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David Fanning <davidf@dfanning.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.129b25fdfb87c7cf989967@news.frii.com...
> ...
> There has been some discussion on this newsgroup lately
> of how to produce a decent PostScript preview image, so
> you could import the image into a Word or PowerPoint
> document and see something reasonable. I've written
> an article on this topic that might shed some light on
> the subject, at least for those of you working on Windows
> machines. (Ninety percent of you, if my recent figures from
> Microsoft are any indication. :-)
>
> http://www.dfanning.com/tips/postscript_preview.html
>
> ...
> The first method is IDL's own, using the Preview keyword.
> The second involves using Ghostview, as suggested on this
> newsgroup by Liam Gumley, and the third method uses Adobe
> Acrobat and was suggested to me by Larry Ashim.
For those who prefer a command-line tool, Russell Lang, the author of GsView
has written epstool (see http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/epstool.html).
Once you sort out the right command-line options, its a lot quicker than
going through the sequence of menu selections required with GsView.
---
Mark Hadfield
m.hadfield@niwa.cri.nz http://katipo.niwa.cri.nz/~hadfield/
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research
PO Box 14-901, Wellington, New Zealand
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17923 is a reply to message #17835] |
Tue, 16 November 1999 00:00 |
Laurent Chardon
Messages: 8
Registered: June 1999
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Junior Member |
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On a similar topic, I'd like to offer the following information. I wanted to
be able to include plots generated by IDL to my word documents. Screen dumps
of the display window were out of the question as well as GIFs, TIFFs,
etc... because their resolution is too crude. I couldn't import PostScript
files either because I don't have a Postscript printer. I found that the
best way was to generate postscript files and to import them into Corel Draw
9. Once there every single part of the graph is an individual object, which
is useful if you have extra manipulations to perform. You could delete the
title of an axis, for example, if that's something you needed to do. But the
real usefullness is that you can select an arbitrary area of the PostScript
page and copy it to the clipboard.
The advantage to me is that I can select one plot with its titles from a
multiplot ps file and copy it in the clipboard, go to word and paste it in a
table cell. Then I go get another plot and paste it in another cell, etc...
This method is very flexible because I can change the layout of the plots on
my word document without having to go back to IDL and generate a new
PostScript file.
Best of all the printed output looks very good on my 600dpi printer,
specially when using true type fonts.
Laurent
--
Remove NOT_THIS in the email address to reply.
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| Re: Windows PostScript Preview Image [message #17926 is a reply to message #17835] |
Tue, 16 November 1999 00:00 |
Liam Gumley
Messages: 473
Registered: November 1994
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Senior Member |
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David Fanning wrote:
> There has been some discussion on this newsgroup lately
> of how to produce a decent PostScript preview image, so
> you could import the image into a Word or Powerpoint
> document and see something reasonable. I've written
> an article on this topic that might shed some light on
> the subject, at least for those of you working on Windows
> machines. (Ninety percent of you, if my recent figures from
> Microsoft are any indication. :-)
>
> http://www.dfanning.com/tips/postscript_preview.html
David, thanks for the nice write up.
> The first method is IDL's own, using the Preview keyword.
> The second involves using Ghostview, as suggested on this
> newsgroup by Liam Gumley, and the third method uses Adobe
> Acrobat and was suggested to me by Larry Ashim.
> I'll let you decide which method you prefer. :-)
I've found GSView to be an indispensable tool for checking that my IDL
Postscript output really looks the way I intended it to look, without
having to print a darn thing. And it adds nice preview images as well!
Check out
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
Cheers,
Liam.
--
Liam E. Gumley
Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley
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