PostScript is dead

[benwiggy]

Sonoma has removed the pstopdf command, as well as the PSNormalizer framework which provides the PostScript interpreter for the OS.

You can still create PS to send to a printer, but there's no support for interpreting PS in the OS anymore. A sad day; though it's been coming for a long time.

Ventura removed Preview's ability to open PS files. CUPS set its default file format as PDF many years ago, and most printers have interpreted PDF natively for years.

If you've got EPS files, then you'll need a third-party app like Affinity Designer or Adobe Illustrator to view them. The old hack of modifying the OS QuickLook generator to view EPS files won't work now either. (And you should probably remove it.)

EPS as a format is unlikely to be deprecated in DTP apps (but never say never...), but I'd recommend converting all EPS files to PDF, which should be a drop-in replacement in any workflow.

 

[Cromulent]

Sonoma has removed the pstopdf command, as well as the PSNormalizer framework which provides the PostScript interpreter for the OS.

You can still create PS to send to a printer, but there's no support for interpreting PS in the OS anymore. A sad day; though it's been coming for a long time.

Ventura removed Preview's ability to open PS files. CUPS set its default file format as PDF many years ago, and most printers have interpreted PDF natively for years.

If you've got EPS files, then you'll need a third-party app like Affinity Designer or Adobe Illustrator to view them. The old hack of modifying the OS QuickLook generator to view EPS files won't work now either. (And you should probably remove it.)

EPS as a format is unlikely to be deprecated in DTP apps (but never say never...), but I'd recommend converting all EPS files to PDF, which should be a drop-in replacement in any workflow.

That is really annoying as I used to export man pages in PS and then convert them to PDF for easier reading.

 

[throAU]

oh noes looks like ghostscript via brew to the rescue

 

[Ben J.]

Kinda sad really.

I remember when Postscript was new. It was so great; no more bitmapped fonts and fontsets for all sizes, infinitely resizable graphics, working with postscript curves in Adobe Illustrator. I loved Illustrator.

Time flies.

 

[bogdanw]

That is really annoying as I used to export man pages in PS and then convert them to PDF for easier reading.

I used that too

man -t diskutil | open -fa "Preview"

oh noes looks like ghostscript via brew to the rescue

No need for homebrew, it can be built from source easily

- download Ghostscript Source (Ghostscript AGPL Release)
https://www.ghostscript.com/releases/gsdnld.html
ghostscript-10.02.0.tar.gz at the moment https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases/latest/
- unarchive
- cd into ghostscript-10.02.0
- configure, make & install

./configure
make
sudo make install

The command above now becomes

man -t diskutil | ps2pdf - - | open -fa "Preview"

or to save as pdf

man -t diskutil | ps2pdf - diskutil.pdf

 

[benwiggy]

No need for homebrew, it can be built from source easily

No need to build from source: this guy provides .pkg Installer files. (Assuming you trust people on the internet.)

Richard Koch Home Page

Interestingly, man -t stills works, even though troff and groff were removed in Monterey, too! enscript went some years ago....

 

[bogdanw]

No need to build from source: this guy provides .pkg Installer files. (Assuming you trust people on the internet.)
https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/

I have no problem with pkg/binary files from trusted sources.
As a general precaution, I upload them to VirusTotal.
Ghostscript-10.02.0.pkg from Richard Koch https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/519550a704b3d605f1e423168c9bc1e47ddc737902aea6fb5af544491b87ff88
I have a problem with homebrew being considered as a must on macOS.

 

[throAU]

I used that too

man -t diskutil | open -fa "Preview"

No need for homebrew, it can be built from source easily

- download Ghostscript Source (Ghostscript AGPL Release)
https://www.ghostscript.com/releases/gsdnld.html
ghostscript-10.02.0.tar.gz at the moment https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases/latest/
- unarchive
- cd into ghostscript-10.02.0
- configure, make & install

./configure
make
sudo make install

The command above now becomes

man -t diskutil | ps2pdf - - | open -fa "Preview"

or to save as pdf

man -t diskutil | ps2pdf - diskutil.pdf

Yeah but security updates are a case of doing all that periodically (for every open source install on your machine) as opposed to

brew update
brew upgrade

(which does them all at once).

home-brew isn't a must, but it makes keeping a whole swathe of dependencies and other desirable packages up to date in two commands, and pretty sure upgrade will run update first these days soo...

I'm a big fan of making keeping things upgraded easy. And remembering where to download every package on your system, keep track of changes, etc. is busy work that a package manager can do. Compiling from source is a great option to have, but it's just way less maintainable for the average user. Been there, done that with Slackware in 1995.

If you really want to watch software compile home-brew can compile from source with -s