Description

This article is from the Amiga FAQ, by Ignaz Kellerer with numerous contributions by others.

5.5 Are there any Postscript interpreters?

   PostScript is a programming language designed to be used to describe
printing on pages. Apple helped make PostScript popular by selling
printers with built in PostScript interpreters. Many programs have
evolved to produce PostScript programs as their output, making
PostScript the lingua franca of printing. Until recently, in order to
print a PostScript file, you had to have a relatively expensive laser
printer. The development that changed this was the software PostScript
interpreter. These programs allow your computer to interpret PostScript
programs, and produce the matrix of dots to send to your normal
graphics printer.
   One of the benefits of PostScript is that it is resolution
independent.  What this means is that it can support the highest
resolution of your device - and that you can reasonably preview
PostScript on a low resolution screen.
   There are two free PostScript interpreters for the Amiga. Post and
Ghostscript. Post comes as an Amiga shared library along with front
ends for previewing to the screen and printing. This structure allows
others to write programs that can show PostScript images on screen. In
fact, AmigaTeX uses Post's library to support incorporation of
PostScript into documents.  Ghostscript similarly comes in two
programs, but not as a shared library.  Ghostscript is the rendering
engine, and Ghostview is the front end.  Sources: Aminet (directorys
`text/print' and `text/dtp'), Fish disk 669
Font Concepts
   The Amiga is able to use two different concepts of fonts. First of
all   there are the bitmap fonts. These fonts are created by drawing a
letter   pixel for pixel onto the screen. The advantage is that they
look good at   small sizes, but are not very good for printout. Also
they don't look   very good when you change their size. Therefore you
have to recreate the   font for each size. Second there are the vector
fonts. They are created by   curves which are stored as mathematical
formula. This has the advantage   that changing the sizes does not
effect the output. But this only applies   for larger sizes and
print-outs. Vector fonts also use less memory.

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