Postscript Expert?

Good idea, Paul! I do have several software-based 'printers' that can output GIF, etc.

Maybe manipulate in GIF, then 'print to' PS or PDF and then merge.

In this biz, it's 'all in the showmanship' ;-)

The circuit design is (usually) easy, the presentation convincing the client that it really works is difficult.

...Jim Thompson

It depends on how the graphical data and text have been encoded into the file.

I suspect that its all a big bitmap, where each pixel (set to other than the background color) is explicitly defined by a coordinate and RGB value. In this case, good luck separating the text from the graph. Open one up with a text editor and see if the text is stored as separate text strings. If the text is easily identifiable, it may be possible to hand edit the color attributes of the graphical elements and then set the text bits back to black.

If its all bits, your best bet might be to convert the Postscript files into a format easily manipulated, clip out the graph data from each, change its color and paste them all on top of one image with the axis, labels and other text intact. This would be particularly handy if you want to automate the process and the source graphs are all of the same size.

For such tools, take a look at

(some more of that Commie freeware ;-)).

If the traces are colored at all, look through the postscript file for "setrgbcolor". It's likely in a macro definition:

/foo { ... setrgbcolor ... } def

in which case you'd look for "foo" instead. Otherwise somewhere you'll see something like:

that's what you change. You might have setcmykcolor instead, which takes four operands.

If the graph lines are black, look for "setgray" instead.

Some years back I came across a postscript file that even the Mac boys at the office couldn't load or print.

Eventually I found a PS to PDF program whose name eludes me now but is well known ( someone here will know it ) . I'd suggest converting to PDF and editing in that.

Graham

alt.binaries.schematics.electronic removed from To line.

I took a wild guess.

Well, there's a ps2pdf command in the ghostscript package (also a freeware product).

But the Imagemagik utilities have numerous Postscript to whatever converters. The 'base' format is PNM (a family of formats, actually). These are optimized for easy modification by a set of command line utilities.

I'm not sure if Jim needs a one time solution or something that's scriptable. The command line stuff might be a bit trickier than a good GUI editor, but if the process has to be repeated, these might be the way to go.

Use something else to plot the output (gnuplot? excell?)

I suspect the graphs are vector images in which case you could a vector graphics editor: eg: inkscape, corel draw,

My client in Australia advises that Corel Draw can edit PDF files and change colors.

Does anyone have a comparison between the full Corel X4 package and the "Home" edition... besides the 4:1 price difference ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

Crapola\\ :-( Just like me to overlook the obvious. In PSpice Probe, right-click a trace symbol, and change its color _before_ "printing" to Postscript and merging

...Jim Thompson

Hi Jim,

My favorite vector graphics editor is "Inkscape". I just tried it on a PDF, and it works beautifully! You can load a PDF, arbitrarily edit the text and graphics, and save again as PDF. (It's kind of worrying how easy this is to do, since many people regard PDF as a format that is "uneditable" in practice).

I just used it to "colour in" a scanned pencil sketch pdf!

I use it on debian (linux) but there are windows releases too.

Thanks, John! I'll look it up.

I keep a v4 of Adobe Acrobat around... it can do many editing tricks _easily_ that v7 can't :-( I think Adobe is a very close second to Microsoft for selling pure shitty software.

...Jim Thompson

That's the one I had in mind.

You can mark it so that it is un-editable.

But, is that just a flag that editors are free to ignore? Like most viewers I have ignore the "can't print" and "can't save" flags AFAIK.

Good question ! I've never bothered to find out. :-(

=A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

Never thought I'd find myself plugging a self-appointed "Guru", but Don Lancaster ( www.tinaja,com ) can show you how to change the output colour and probably do the whole damn simulation as well, all in Postscript.

-- Joe

=A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

Use the Probe File->Export menu and export to text, import into excel and merge files there.

/Klaus

"Merging" wasn't the issue, changing the color was.

...Jim Thompson

The various Postscript manuals are freely available although they may not provide a quick answer. IIRC there are 'red' 'blue' and 'green' books. One is the Postscript reference manual and one is a tutorial. Alternatively you could ask in:

comp.lang.postscript