Downloading and viewing PostScript documents

About PostScript

PostScript (a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated) is a page description language used by many printers. Because it is provides a consistent way to encode special characters and graphics, it is also being used increasingly on the web as a way of storing mathematics documents.

PostScript documents on my web pages

A lot of the pages on the web sites for my courses are stored in both HTML and PostScript format. The HTML pages are somewhat smaller, so they download quickly, and they produce better-looking screen images. However, they are very slow to print and the printed output is of poor quality. They are also stored as PostScript files so that you can print them exactly as they were intended to be seen. Since most web browsers cannot display PostScript files, you need to have either a PostScript printer or an external program that can handle PostScript files.

Viewing PostScript documents on C & C computers

If you are viewing this page on one of the Computing and Communications computers at UW, your computer should already be set up to display PostScript documents on the screen. Just click on a hypertext link that points to a PostScript document, (included at the end of each HTML file of the solutions, tests or whatever) and the PostScript document should pop up in a separate window. If this doesn't work for you (for example, if you get an error message or a dialog box asking you if you want to save the file to local disk), ask one of the C & C consultants for help. If there are no consultants around, you can send e-mail to help@cac.washington.edu.

Once you are looking at the PostScript viewer's window, there should be a menu option (usually on the "File" menu) that will allow you to print the document.

If you don't have a PostScript viewer...

If you are using a computer other than those provided by C & C, such as your home computer, there may not be a PostScript viewer available. In that case, if you have a PostScript printer (for example, any Apple Laserwriter), you can download the file to your disk and then simply print it as is. Consult your browser's documentation or help screen for information on how to download files to local disk.

Obtaining a PostScript viewer

If you're ambitious and have lots of disk space available, you can download a PostScript viewer and install it on your own system. There are free viewers available for Macintosh, Windows, OS/2, and X-Windows. In each case, you need two separate programs: Ghostscript (a PostScript interpreter), and a screen viewer to go with it. Here is where to get information and download the programs: