University of Wisconsin-Madison

NEEP423 Course Notes: File Formats

The files posted here are in two formats, "gif" and "PostScript". Click on the gif files and you'll see them on-screen, displayed by Netscape in the Netscape window. Click on the PostScript files on CAE machines, and you should see them on-screen.

gif

• Gif files won't print as crisply as the PostScript files.
• Especially in the graphs, you won't see some of the vertical/horizontal grid or axis lines; some of the characters are also malformed (notably an italic "f").
• There will be more gif files than PostScript when the corresponding PostScript file is a multi-page document.
• Also, if you are printing the gif from an application (such as JPEGView on the Mac), instead of from the Netscape window, you may need to check "scale to fit page" in the Printer setup, or it may not fit on the page.

PostScript

PostScript files are usually lengthy ascii text files containing code which is translated by a PostScript interpreter. The interpreter is always resident on a PostScript printer (e.g. Apple Laserwriter), but programs exist which will read PostScript files and display them on-screen. PostScript files will print with excellent quality when sent to a PostScript printer.

To display ".ps" files on-screen, the CAE Wintel machines use gsview or ghostscript, which is started when you click on a ".ps" file. Although the font selection and character position displayed may not be correct, the document should print correctly. Problems starting the application have been reported - you may need to quit gsview every time you're finished viewing/printing a document.

Note there may be multiple pages in the ".ps" files.