Postscript Language Reference

Programmers who specialize in PostScript, the page-description language, now have a newly updated reference guide for LanguageLevel 3. PostScript® Language Reference starts off with a bit of history on the language and an overview of the new version. It goes on to cover basic topics such as raster output devices, scan conversion, and page-description languages in general.

PostScript® Language Reference provides an overview of how to use the PostScript interpreter and understand the ideal structure of PostScript page descriptions. The book covers the heart of the language, including syntax, data types and objects, stacks, execution, basic operators, memory management, file input/output (I/O), functions, errors, and filtered-files and binary-encoding details. Subsequent chapters cover graphics, fonts, device control, rendering, and operators.

The appendices include a LanguageLevel feature summary, implementation limits, interpreter parameters, compatibility issues, character sets, encoding vectors, system-name encodings, and operator-usage guidelines. There's also a bibliography with additional reading recommendations. --Kathleen Caster