[fpc-pascal] Pascal postscript reading library

[Johann Glaser]

Hi!

> I am a little impressed that everyone says postscript is so complex,
> so I'm reevaluating which path to go, but I do have a competent
> software developer available to whom send the task, so the amount of
> work isn't that much a problem =P (as long as it is doable by 1 person
> in a couple of months)

Please note that PostScript is actually a full features programming
language, which (just "accidentially") has some commands suitable to
draw on a page. So, in PostScript there are infinite different ways to
describe an identical page. Compare to a "descriptive" printer language
or drawing/image format (like HPGL, PDF, DXF, SVG, PCL, JPG, ...) where
only the order but not the way an element is expressed can be different.

AFAIK in PostScript you can express a lot of difficult stuff like
clipping paths (even a font can be a clipping path for your drawing).
So, while a PS interpreter is relatively easy to develop (for a computer
scientist), the printing engine (controlled by the PostScript program)
is not trivial at all.

I recommend to search either for
 - a descriptive printer language / page description language
 - a postscript interpreter which offers the page in some descriptive
   terms (e.g. a list of elements)

Bye
  Hansi

PS: Since you are developing a Windows printer driver you could simply
convert the GDI commands to the CNC commands without the PostScript
intermediate step. But I dislike this option because this would give a
fully platform-dependent driver.