[PLUG] ps2ascii not working: GS-8.63

[Carlos Konstanski]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009, Rich Shepard wrote:

> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:05:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
> Reply-To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] ps2ascii not working: GS-8.63
> 
> On Thu, 15 Oct 2009, Carlos Konstanski wrote:
>
>> My ps2ascii man page mentions pstotext as an alternative. It claims that
>> pstotext is actually better because it takes the width of characters into
>> account:
>
>> ps2ascii ignores the encoding and does not do especially well with
>> kerning. For that you should use pstotext for postscript (but presently
>> not for PDF).
>
> Carlos,
>
>   pstotext is much older than ps2ascii:
>
> pstotext 1.9 of 2003-01-09
> Copyright (C) 1995-1998, Digital Equipment Corporation.
> Modified by Ghostgum Software Pty Ltd.
>
> and the output is useless:
>
> ###### #
> ############ ###### #
> ## #### #### ##### ### ########## ########## ###
> #### ### # # # #
> ########## ###### # ############### ############# #### # #### ##### #
> ############ ### #
> ## ###### ##### ####
> ##### ######### ########## #
> ## # ##### ################# #
> ## ##########
> ############### # ############### ####
>
>   Both pstotext and ps2ascii used to work flawlessly. I cannot recall when
> they stopped working, but it's a PITA that they have.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich

Yeah, you're hating it. The other thing mentioned in my man page is
that ps2ascii uses gv to do the work. Perhaps it's nothing more than a
frontend to gv. When was the last update to gv or to ghostscript? Can
you go back to the old version to test?

Carlos