on Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 01:32:49AM +0000, Colin Watson (cjw44@flatline.org.uk) wrote: > kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote: > >Specific instance is an Excel spreadsheet, printed to file from > >StarOffice (that bloated stuck pig of an office suite), then attempting > >to convert the file with mpage to a two-pages-per-sheet with: > > > > mpage -dp -2 < soffice.ps > soffice-2up.ps > > > >Viewing (or printing) the results with gv flashes up the rendered > >content for a moment, then blanks the page. 'gs' has similar results. > >This appears to be a problem noted by others (Google, Deja turn up some > >references), but I can't seem to find a fix. > > Hm. I can't help with mpage, I'm afraid. As a workaround, have you tried > psnup (from the psutils package)? Of course, you'll have to cause the > PostScript file to contain its original self twice, perhaps using > psmerge. Sorry if a workaround wasn't what you were after. Thanks, psnup *does* do the trick. I've been using mpage for a few years, so it's going to tough to kick the habit, but that's a good one to know. The problem, according to web searches, is broken PS output by StarOffice. One fix is to use a set of ps2ps commands to produce rectified, Level-1 postscript. From a set of commands found online, I've created the attached 'sopsvirginizer' script -- it un-fscks StarOffice postscript output. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Zelerate, Inc. http://www.zelerate.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
#!/bin/sh
# This script virginizes (de-fucks) StarOffice postscript, for use in
# mpage and other tools.
# Author: Karsten M. Self
# Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2000
# Credits: George Smiley (georgesmiley@my-deja.com) for the idea
# License: This work is public domain
# ----------------------------------------
# Arguments: $1= infile, $2= outfile
# ----------------------------------------
if [ X$1 = "X" -o X$2 = "X" ]; then
echo "usage: $( basename $0 ) infile outfile" 1>&2; exit 1
fi
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin
TMPFILE=$( mktemp /tmp/sops1.XXXXXX ) || exit 1
trap 'rm -f $TMPFILE; exit 1' 1 2 3 13 15
ps2ps $1 $TMPFILE && ps2ps -dLanguageLevel=1 $TMPFILE $2
rm -f $TMPFILE
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