Question about PDF manipulation

[Scott Stevens]

On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 11:09:01 -0500
Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:

> Michael Sokolov wrote:
> > There are very few things in the Universe that enrage me more than
> > PDF files that have been produced from PostScript with the original
> > PS being unavailable to me.  PS reconstructed from PDF is never as
> > good as the original PS from which the PDF was made.
> 
> What is your proof that the PDF was created from PS?  Was the PS
> hand-edited by a person, or generated by a program?  If the latter, I
> doubt the original PS will have "more" than the PDF.
> 
> > The difference between PostScript and PDF is very much like that
> > between the source and binary forms of a program.  Publishing PDF
> > files while withholding or discarding PS from which they were made
> > is a crime
> 
> Most PDFs I've created from PS source had that PS source generated by
> some other program.  PS was just the intermediate transport.  The
> "original PS" didn't exist since the *original* was really something
> else.-- 

Don Lancaster has written a lot of cool info about directly creating
postscript files with a text editor.  It was his 'big thing' after all
the 'cookbook' books that we love and revere.  He still has a website
with all of his postscript lore on it.