What's with the text strings in the PS output file?

Question

I'm experimenting with creating PostScript files from BookMaster source. Using the Script DEV(PSA) option and LPR with the BINARY option from VM, my file prints just fine on our PostScript printer. I'm curious though about the actual content of the LISTPS file Script created. I expected the file to be ASCII, and it is, sort of. The first 57 lines are ASCII, but the remainder of the file consists of both ASCII and EBCDIC characters. When I browse the file on VM, I can read the text portions of my document. I did NOT use the PSOUT(EBCDIC) option. Can anyone provide an explanation?

Answer

  Your text string codepoints remain in EBCDIC.
  The LISTPS file contains an EBCDIC->ASCII encoding vector which
  maps the EBCDIC codepoints to the equivalent PostScript
  character IDs. We did it this way so current inventories
  of script source files which rely on the codepoint->character
  mappings in the AFP codepage files would format as expected.
  The PSFCPnnn files we ship with DCF match the set of
  codepages in use when we shipped the PS support in the
  late 1980s.
  The output using the PSOUT(EBCDIC) option is unusable for
  reasons explained in another FAQ item.

Last updated: 97/10/29 20:02:38