Re: viewing postscript (.prn) files

["Ridder, Fred" <F -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>]

On Tue, 19 May 1998, hm chou <hchou -at- INTERACCESS -dot- COM> asked

>is there a way to view postscript files in Windows/Macs? i remember a while
>ago an application called GhostView (or similarly named), but i could never
>get it to work on my wintel machine. any suggestions?

I think you'll find several postings in the archives if you search on
GhostView.
If I recall correctly, it's primarily a UNIX tool.

If you own Adobe Acrobat, you can always run a PostScript file through
Acrobat Distiller to turn it into a PDF that can be viewed or printed. If
you
don't need to view it electronically, you should be able to pipe the
PostScript
file directly to most PostScript printer and get readable hard-copy. I know
some printers are more sensitive than others to having the correct
PostScript
file header information, but I've always had luck sending all sorts of
PostScript
files directly to various current H-P LaserJet models.

BTW, in your Subject line you refer to .prn files, which are not necessarily
PostScript. Since Windows is so nondiscriminating with that default
extension for "print-to-file" filenames, a .prn file could be PostScript, or
it
could be some version of PCL, or it could be Epson's printer control
language,
or it could be...  It all depends on what printer driver was selected when
the
printer file was created. If the file in question is PCL rather than
PostScript,
I'm not sure there's much you can do with it other than make a hard copy
on an H-P printer.

HTH,
Fred Ridder  (mailto:f -dot- ridder -at- dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic Corporation, Parsippany, NJ

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