USING GRAPHICS

Previewing and Printing Graphics Files

Previewing and printing graphics files on the WWW can be done using several applications. This document is intended to provide some basic information about some software which is available for doing this.

Postscript Files

Postscript is a very popular, common language supported by many printers for rending graphics. Because it is not pixel, or raster based graphics language, the quality from printed graphics is high and the file size can be quite small. The language was developed and licensed by Adobe systems.

There are commercial products to convert files written in postscript to a language which a printer understands, or for previewing, however there are free software converters available:


The ghostscript package is available for several platforms, including windows and it is free. It can be installed on your computer, and this will allow you to convert a file for printing, and for previewing. If you want a web browser to show the file automatically it will have to be configured to start the application in your browser to do the conversion.

PDF Format and Conversion

Other packages which convert to PostScript, or utilize it in processing documents include:

The language pdf (portable document format) is another common format for graphics/text files.

Graphics Processing and Conversion

Other image formats are jpg, mpg, and gif. A web browser is typically configured to be able to display gif and sometimes jpg images. These are pixel based image formats. There are several packages for inter-converting these formats, e.g., PostScript to gif, or converting the PostScript to jpg, or jpg to gif:

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