| Re: Recovery from PostScript file [message #18559 is a reply to message #18432] |
Thu, 13 January 2000 00:00   |
William Daffer
Messages: 34
Registered: February 1999
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Member |
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davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
> Chris Roberts (c.roberts1@ic.ac.uk) writes:
>
>> I have a user who generated a PostScript file of his IDL data as a graph,
>> and has now lost his data file. Is there anything sensible I can do to help
>> him recover some of the data from the PostScript file?
>
> With the exception of providing him with a good ruler with lots of
> gradations, no. :-(
>
> The PostScript file has as much relationship to the data as a
> picture of your user has with your user.
>
> 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
Oh, I don't know about that!
I know someone that did this. Postscript is an interpreted
language. Once you learn the language, and provided that the data is
vector graphics, you should be able to retrieve that data to some
level of significance. Maybe even alot. The language just says
things like, "go to this location on the page and draw a line from
here to this other location," where 'location' is specified in some
completely determined local coordinate system. You have the
coordinate system. You know the origin and the scale. You should be
able to convert it back to 'real' data just as you can go from
'device' coordinates on an X window to 'data' coordinates. You
wouldn't have to learn all that much, just the statements that
define the coordinate system of the page and those that have to do
with drawing polygonal line segments. But, it would be more in the
way of a long term solution, and it wouldn't work on bitmaps.
However, the sentiment is that it isn't worth it for one
graph. Unless it's a real! important one, best to just scan it and
convert it using a high res tiff or something like that. Otherwise,
tell 'em they blew it.
William
--
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx.
Public Key: http://home.earthlink.net/~whdaffer/#PGP-public-key
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