Fixing Postscript
Being back in academia, I often find myself looking for papers about various topics. Occasionally, I run across a good paper, but the author has decided to post it in the legacy PostScript format. Since I use Windows, this bugs me, since there really isn't a very good PS (or POS?) viewer out there.
So I've devised a method for making my life easier, and figured I'd share it. The idea is to use the ps2pdf script to convert the PS file, then open it in PDF form using Foxit.
First, [Foxit PDF Reader](http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ghostscript/gs815w32.exe?download">go get GhostScript and install it. This is the program most people would suggest you use for viewing PS files, but I find it ugly, slow, and too much unlike my usual PDF viewer, despite PS and PDF being so similar.
(Side note: if you are sick of waiting for Adobe Acrobat Reader to boot up every time, go check out <a href="http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php). It's much smaller and faster than Acrobat, but is still free.)
Once GhostScript is installed, open a command prompt (Start Run "cmd") and type ps2pdf. If it says something about how to use ps2pdf, great, you can just put ps2pdf in the batch file, otherwise, you're going to need to find it in Program Files. In my install, it is "c:Program Filesgslibps2pdf".
Next, open notepad and copy the following code into it:
@echo off
"c:Program Filesgslibps2pdf" %1 %TEMP%temp.pdf
start %TEMP%temp.pdf
Save this as viewPS.bat in "My Documents". (Make sure you set the file type to "All Files".)
Now, go find a test PS file and download it. Once it's downloaded, right-click it and select "Open With / Choose Program...". When the Open With box comes up, select Browse, go to My Documents and find viewPS.bat. Make sure you check the "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file".
A command window should pop up briefly, then Foxit or Acrobat should open up. If your test worked, great, you're done! Note that you may have to tell Firefox or IE to use this batch file to open PS documents, but that's usually pretty easy, and depending on how things are set up, it may be done for you. Let me know if you run into any problems.
At 10:24 PM on February 18, 2006, Keacher said,
Good idea. Also, a good point made about how l-o-n-g Acrobat takes to launch.
Of course, if one has the full version of Acrobat, one can associate postscript files with it and have them open directly from the browser.
At 11:00 PM on February 18, 2006, Tyler said,
Very true. Unfortunately I lost my completely legal copy of real Acrobat.