[pstricks] Is pst-pdf meant to work with arbitrary postscript

[Herbert Voss]

Gene Selkov schrieb:

> I have just stumbled on this line:
> 
>   "The package pst-pdf simplifies the use of graphics from PSTricks
> and other PostScript code in PDF documents"
> 
> and decided to give pst-pdf a try, assuming that "other PostScript"
> would mean "any other". I'm seeing variable degrees of success.

you should simply try ps2pdf. You need pst-pdf only when you want
to use the microtype package or include a lot of jpeg or pdf
images.

> The problem at hand: pst-pdf creates broken postscript out of
> postscript special. I know nothing about postscript and I don't know
> how broken it is. I get this message when I try to view it in evince
> (which I believe has a way of calling gs):
> 
> undefined -21
> 
> and when I call gs directly, the message is:
> 
> Error: /undefined in b12

> The bit that causes this error looks like this:
> 
> {\unitlength1bp\begin{pspicture}(  74.95,  27.94)
> {\chemfontname
> \special{\string"
> %initialization section
> 0.500000 setlinewidth /lw 0.500000 def
> /bw 2.500000 def
> /bd 1.000000 def
> /aw 5.000000 def
> %formula
> 30.00 0.00 0.00 18.00 b0
> 90.00 15.59 9.00 12.00 b0

there is no b12 defined, the reason why you get such an error.
However, where is the sense of using a pspicture environment
and then always macros from the basic LaTeX picture and not
PSTricks?

> 40.00 15.59 9.00 6.00 b12
> -30.00 15.59 9.00 18.00 b0
> 30.00 31.18 0.00 18.00 b0
> } % end of special
> \put(-1.000000,-1.000000){\textcolor{white}{\rule{0.010000pt}{0.010000pt}}}
> \put(75.952932,28.942750){\textcolor{white}{\rule{0.010000pt}{0.010000pt}}}
> \put(11.908802,21.000000){\textcolor{white}{\rule{7.359310pt}{6.942750pt}}}
> \put(11.908802,21.000000){O}
> \put(17.685334,9.567841){\textcolor{white}{\rule{4.998780pt}{6.577770pt}}}
> \put(17.685334,9.567841){3}
> \put(46.765372,5.528625){\textcolor{white}{\rule{28.187560pt}{6.942750pt}}}
> \put(46.765372,5.528625){COOH}
> }\end{pspicture}}%s
> 
> I see "b12" in there -- is it a co-incidence, or is it the element
> that breaks it? If I replace it with "b0", the figure gets rendered
> without crashing, but then it has nothing but text in it.

b0 _and_ b12 must bedefined somewhere in your code.

> I'll appreciate any hints for how to debug this.

without a complete minmal example it is not possible
to locate the problem.

Herbert