MacWorld 1998 October/Macworld (1998-10).dmg/Shareware World/Utilities/Disk & File/GST-PSPort/PSPort - Read Me

Text File | 1998-08-01 | 8KB | 193 lines

RELEASE NOTES FOR PSPORT

This is a utility of the 'one dumb job' variety. It does one job, and
does it fast and with minimal hoorah.

PSPort is System 7 and above ONLY. Its only interface is Drag and
Drop, so you cannot use it with earlier Systems. If you double-click
on it from a System 6 machine, you will get an error message and the
software will quit gracefully.

PSPort does this: it filters PostScript files originating on MS-DOS
or Unix systems and converts them so that they can be downloaded
from Apple Macintosh computers. The conversions are these:

Control-D (ASCII 4) is thrown away.

Control-Z (ASCII 26) is thrown away.

CR (ASCII 13) is passed unstranslated.

LF (ASCII 10) is thrown away _if_ it follows a CR. If not,
it is converted to a CR.

That's it. PSPort has been tested to work on ASCII-encoded
MS-DOS-originated PostScript files. I surmise it would be a
Real Bad Idea to use it on Binary-encoded PostScript files...

To use PSPort _with_ System 7, simply select the files you want to
filter and drag them on the program's icon or an alias of it. New
files will be created, and your original source files will remain
unaltered.

Greg Swann
9/16/92



ADDENDUM REGARD VERSION 2.0.0

There are only two changes in this version:

1. PSPort is _massively_ faster. Of my utilities, this is the one
that has been most annoying to me to use, simply because PostScript
files are so large. Version 2.0.0 makes use of the Lizzie
Border/Amanuensis/Mark My Words read/write logic to do the same
'one dumb job' many orders of magnitude faster.

2. In keeping with the spirit of the season, PSPort now sports a
festive icon.

Happy Holidays to all!,

Greg Swann
12/16/92



ADDENDUM REGARD VERSION 2.0.1

If you want, we can call this one BirkensPort...

DTPForum member Jim Birkenseer dropped me a note regarding version
2.0.0. He had what I thought was a good interface idea, so I've
distorted it beyond all recognition through the lens of my mind and
implemented the mangled version here (grin).

What Jim wanted was for PSPort to save the newly created files in
its own home folder, rather that in the home folder of the original
files. He D&Ds directly from DOS floppies, so saving to PSPort's
folder would save him time and headaches. I thought that was a
little non-intuitive as a default, so what I've done is add two
keyboard overrides.

1. If you D&D on PSPort, it works as it always has, saving the new
files in the same folder as the originals.

2. If you hold down the Option key as you D&D, you will be prompted
for a volume/folder to save the new files into. As with Amanuensis,
the highlighted prompt string is meaningless. We're simply looking
for a target folder.

3. If you hold the the Command key as you D&D, the new files will
be saved into the folder where PSPort itself lives.

This is the only change implemented with this version.



However... Jim was raving about how great PSPort is and how he wants
to send me money for it. In truth, it's not great - just a little
hack involving less than an hour of work to date - and it's free.
But I _do_ have for-pay products that are eminently of interest to
service bureaus and type shops, PSPort's primary audience.

These are:

XP8 - a very intelligent file filter that cleans up and makes the
filthiest text QuarkXPress-ready. Among many other features, it offers
DOS-file reformatting, financial-text clean-up, garbage disposal,
typographic quality enhancement, and the best quote conversion we know
of. The ShareWare version of XP8 (v1.0.0) can be found in CompuServe's
Desktop Publishing Forum (GO DTPFORUM), Library 5, under the name
XP8.SEA or in the Info-Mac archives as GST-XP8Demo.sit. The
current commercial version is v1.0.7 and offers a great many
enhancements over the ShareWare version.

Torquemada The Inquisitor - batch global search and replace software
with wildcards, pattern matching, string substitution, et very
cetera. With Drag & Drop under Systems 7 or 8, you can run up to 640
searches on up to 128 files in one batch. Features the most
intelligent case-conversion we know of. The most-recent FreeWare
version (1.1.0) can be found under the name TORQUE.SEA in Library 5
or in the Info-Mac archives as GST-TorqueDemo.sit. The current
commercial version is 1.3.0, offering a great many enhancements,
including new "wildthings" and a _lot_ of new User Interface power.
The commercial version ships with Torquemada's Ghost, a scriptable,
backgroundable Torquemada. A DemoWare version of Torquemada's Ghost
is available as TGHOST.SEA in Library 5 or in the Info-Mac archives
as GST-TGhostDemo.sit.

Shane the Plane 2.0.2 - file and font attribute editing utility.
Interactively or in Drag & Drop batches, permits you to change the
Creator/Type of files, their created/modified dates and times, a
host of significant Finder flags, plus a lot more. Makes files
invisible/visible, makes fonts behave like files by removing their
BNDL resources, batch "pastes" custom icons, intelligently renames
and/or "slugs" files, et very cetera. A demonstration version (fully
functional but limited to 32 launches) can be found in Library 12
under the name SPDEMO.SEA or in the Info-Mac archives as
GSU-STPDemo.sit.

Mark My Words - a very elaborate MS-Word binary to QuarkXPress Tags
text filter. It eats Word 4.0, 5.0 or 5.1 files, interactively or by
Drag & Drop, and converts the binary to QuarkXPress tagged text. You
can elect to include or omit any feature of Word's styling, and many
features can be converted from their WP-like form to their DTP-like
form (e.g., underscoring to italic). With Em Software's Xtags
Xtension, picture and text boxes (including Word's tables) can be
retained. A demonstration version (fully functional but limited to
32 launches) can be found in Library 12 under the name MMWDEM.SEA or
in the Info-Mac archives as GST-MMWDemo.sit.

(While I've vectored all the files toward CIS and the internet, my
primary haunt, they are also available on other services, and on any BBS
which has the most recent version of AMUG's BBS-In-A-Box CD-ROM on
line.)

All of these programs are sold on the same terms: (US)$50 each, per
license. Two to 10 licenses are $45 each. For 11 or more licenses you're
better off buying a site license. All of this is explained in the
registration software supplied with this archive.

Of course, if you just want to send me money - for PSPort or one of
my other freeware hacks - go right ahead (grin).



(More) Happy Holidays to all!,

Greg Swann
12/20/92



ADDENDUM REGARD VERSION 2.0.2

Two small changes:

1. New icons. Not necessarily better, but new.

2. When you actually save into a different folder with Option-Drag &
Drop, the destination filename is not changed. That is, instead of
"myFile.PS!", you get "myFile", albeit with a PSPort icon. We're
checking to make sure you really did target a folder different from
the source file's folder, and, either way, a pre-existing file with
the exact same name as the new destination file will be deleted and
replaced. What you get--and I admit this is a feature of dubious
worth--is the same name you started with.

Also: My friend Shane Stanley, and AppleScipt fanatic, is telling me
about live folders, to be implemented in OS 8.5. In this scheme, a
folder could have an AppleScript attached to it that would operate
on each and every file that arrives in it. PSPort is useful for more
that just PostScript: We are making all DOS/Wintel and Unix files
Mac-like as a side-effect. An Applescriptable PSPort could be
attached to an Incoming folder on a file server. It could
Mac-process and redirect every alien file that came its way. This
amounts to woolgathering at the moment, but that's where all the
pretty sweaters come from, ain't it?

Greg Swann
8/1/98