[COLUG] windoz and postscript files.

[Rob Funk]

Mark Erbaugh wrote:
> I used XSane to scan some documents and saved them as .ps files. Under
> Linux the .ps file look just fine. However, if I use ps2pdf to convert
> them to pdf files, the image is cropped and the full page isn't shown.
> The originals were 8.5 by 11 inches. What am I doing wrong?

PostScript is a scalable vector format, while scans are pixel-oriented 
bitmaps.  Those bitmaps can be embedded in postscript, but the postscript 
needs additional information about the resolution and real-world 
dimensions (e.g. in inches) of the image.

Most likely when xsane saved as postscript, the page size was improperly 
specified, possibly as A4 size instead of letter size.

> Also, is there a way to take multiple .ps files and turn them into
> separate pages in a single .pdf file?

Postscript files can usually be directly combined together into one:
  cat page1.ps page2.ps page3.ps > document.ps
  ps2pdf document.ps

Sometimes you can use the psmerge command (from "psutils") to combine the 
pages:
  psmerge page1.ps page2.ps page3.ps > document.ps
  ps2pdf document.ps

-- 
==============================|   "A microscope locked in on one point
 Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net> |Never sees what kind of room that it's in"
 http://www.funknet.net/rfunk |    -- Chris Mars, "Stuck in Rewind"