PostScripttekniikkaan

PostScripttekniikkaan, commonly referred to as PostScript, is a page description language (PDL) developed by Adobe Systems. It was designed to provide a consistent and precise way to describe the appearance of a document, including text, graphics, and images, regardless of the output device. PostScript achieves this by defining a mathematical model of how a page should be rendered. This means that the description is device-independent, allowing the same PostScript file to be printed on various devices like laser printers, imagesetters, and plotters, with the output quality determined by the capabilities of the specific device.

The language itself is a stack-based, interpreted programming language. It includes commands for drawing lines, curves, shapes, and for manipulating text, such as scaling, rotating, and positioning characters. PostScript also has a rich set of operators for managing color, filling areas, and defining patterns. Its power lies in its ability to describe complex layouts and high-resolution graphics.

PostScript played a crucial role in the desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. It enabled WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) printing by ensuring that what appeared on the screen would closely match the printed output. While newer technologies like PDF (Portable Document Format), also developed by Adobe, have largely supplanted PostScript for document exchange, PostScript remains important in certain high-end printing workflows and as a foundation for understanding modern graphics processing. Many printers still include a PostScript interpreter to process these files directly.