Apple drops PostScript support in Preview for macOS Ventura
As of the new macOS Ventura, Apple's Preview app will no longer support PostScript or Encapsulated PostScript documents.
Following the public release of macOS Ventura, Apple has issued a support document about .ps and .eps file support being removed from Preview.
"The Preview app included with your Mac supports PostScript (.ps) and Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) files in macOS Monterey or earlier," says the new support document. "Starting with macOS Ventura, Preview no longer supports these files."
"Other apps that can view or convert .ps and .eps files are available from the App Store and elsewhere," it continues.
Apple does add that it is still possible to print PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript files "by dragging them into your printer queue."
Read on AppleInsider
Following the public release of macOS Ventura, Apple has issued a support document about .ps and .eps file support being removed from Preview.
"The Preview app included with your Mac supports PostScript (.ps) and Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) files in macOS Monterey or earlier," says the new support document. "Starting with macOS Ventura, Preview no longer supports these files."
"Other apps that can view or convert .ps and .eps files are available from the App Store and elsewhere," it continues.
Apple does add that it is still possible to print PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript files "by dragging them into your printer queue."
- Open System Settings
- Choose Printers & Scanners
- Click on your printer's name
- Click on the Printer Queue button
- Drag the file onto the Printer Queue window
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
More I'd say it indicates Preview.app's decline in relevance.
Preview is my go-to app for viewing and quickly cropping and annotating any PDF.
It is sad however to see the coming end of Postscript. WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pointer), the laser printer, MacWrite, MacDraw and Postscript were the original desktop publishing revolution when PCs still used DOS, Wordstar and Lotus123 (and staff had to be sent on training courses to learn how to use them).
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You can just add the pstopdf command to the pipeline to convert the ps to a pdf file that is then given to Preview.
man -t ls | pstopdf -o ~/tmp.pdf | open -fa Preview ~/tmp.pdf
and define it in your .zshrc or .bashrc:
I loved Adobe's products. I was all over Illustrator when it first came out. Learning about the power of splines and how easy it was to create smooth lines was an eye opener. Same with Photoshop. I read through their beautifully crafted manuals (way back when they made such things) and devoured everything. Same with PageMaker and then InDesign.
I rarely used those those tools for commercial work - mostly for my own creative endeavors. Then Adobe jacked up it's prices by something like 300-400%. It was outrageous. Later they went to a subscription model - all geared toward commercial production and cutting out the home user market. The price elasticity curve didn't include home or casual users. Microsoft certainly markets to corporate users. But they never forgot home users. Adobe left us high and dry. Fortunately, we now have much less expensive alternatives, many of which have similar interfaces that Adobe pioneered.
If you are so inclined, you can provide feedback to Apple on this here:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html
Device independence was one of the great innovations of PostScript. The exact same PostScript file could be sent to a 300 dpi laser printer, or a 2540 dpi LinoType® Image Setter. It was a godsend to be able to easily proof files on a laser printer, before sending them to an image setter to be rendered onto expensive photographic film (or direct to printing plates). Prior to PostScript print files had to be custom generated for the brand and model of printer to be used. Furthermore, the selection of available fonts varied from printer to printer.
Even hardware specific aspects (like duplexing) are standard across different printers. With a properly written PostScript file, you can request duplexing, and have it print simplex on printers without that feature. Similarly, a color PostScript will simply print in B&W on a B&W laser printer. With PostScript you can even specify the halftone screen dot shape in a hardware independent manner.
PostScript is both a Page Description Language and a Programming Language. The Page Description features allows the specification of how the page should look in a manner that is independent from the specifics of the printer.
The Programming Language aspects are both a blessing and a curse. The first PostScript printer was the Apple LaserWriter. At the time, the Mac internally used QuickDraw for graphics. They wrote a QuickDraw emulator in PostScript which allowed the library of existing Mac applications to print. That was the blessing.
The curse was that programs in PostScript could take an arbitrarily long time to run. If the printer was being asked to do a lot of computation, a printer rate at 40 pages per minute might only print 12 pages per minute.
The programming features also allowed the creation of files that altered the results depending on the printer being used (but this was rare). For instance, a file that needed to absolutely maximize printing precision, could fine tune the placement and size of graphics to conform to the hardware pixels of the printer being used. If you sent the file to a 300ppi printer, the adjustments could be up to 1/300 of an inch. On a 2540 dpi image setter, the adjustments would be less than 1/2540 of an inch.
PDF is essentially PostScript, with the programming aspects removed. it's easier and simpler to write something that understands PDF than the full PostScript language.
Of course, without the programming aspects, PostScript and Adobe wouldn't exist. The idea for PostScript came about when Warnock and Geschke were working at Xerox. Xerox liked the device independent aspects, but hated the programability. If Xerox sold a 120 page per minute printer, they didn't want a language with programing that could slow it down. Warnock and Geschke felt strongly about programability, and left to form Adobe systems. Xerox developed InterPress, which was their proprietary version without programability. Adobe got Apple on board, as the programability meant the LaserWrite could be taught to understand the QuickDraw primitives. At the time, the processor in the LaserWriter was about as powerful (if not more powerful) than the processor in the Mac.
Modern Macs internally use PDF. It's easy to convert from PDF into PostScript. By the way, if you want an idea of the sorts of graphic primitives found in PostScript, just look at Adobe Illustrator. The primitives in Illustrator pretty much line up with the primitives in PostScript (Bezier curves, fills, stokes, dashed lines, clipping paths,...)
man -t pstopdf | pstopdf -o "Postscript to PDF man page.pdf"
PostScript allowed the creation of files that would work on any PostScript printer.
PostScript tried to do everything. In addition to a Page Description Language, it also had printer control features (i.e. pull the first page from Tray #1, and the remaining pages from Tray#2). PostScript Printer Description (PPD) files would describe the specific capabilities of a printer. The PPD printer would describe how many input trays the printer had, whether it had manual feed, duplex, color, or even a stapler. The printer driver could then send a few lines of PostScript before sending the file to request device specific features.
The challenge with PostScript files generated by the Mac Printer driver is that they were not stand-alone legal PostScript files. Remember, PostScript is a programming language, and the Mac printer driver relied on a library of routines that emulated Apple's QuickDraw imaging system. Rather than embedding that library in every file, the Mac sent it once, and it remained on the printer for subsequent prints.