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

[Herbert Voss]

Gene Selkov schrieb:
> 2009/9/16 Herbert Voss <Herbert.Voss at fu-berlin.de>:
> 
>> you should simply try ps2pdf.
> 
> I tried. It does not preserve page geometry and introduces some odd
> distortions to both text and graphics. Things often fall off the
> verge. Sometimes I get a pdf file that I can view on my screen, but
> things get lost (even those safely within the page margins) when
> printed. So I am not sure which problem is easier to solve -- this or
> ps2pdf.

ps2pdf is absoluetely easier to use. What you need ist to load
package gemetry by

\usepackage[dvips]{geometry}

or alternatively run dvips -T<x,y> with page size. See man dvips

> I need to include a lot of PS specials (thousands of them). They are
> generated by the ochem package.
> 
> When I feed them to pdfjadetex, it says,
> 
>   Non-PDF special ignored!

sure, pdf cannot handle specials

> So the question remains, can it do it or can it not, and if it can,
> what am I doing that it doesn't like?

it can, but it makes no sense. The definitions of ochem are valid
for one page, after a pagebreak the /b12 and others are not known.

>> without a complete minmal example it is not possible
>> to locate the problem.
> 
> Here's a complete example, although I am not sure how close to minimal
> it is. The tex file is generated, and I don't know what parts of it
> can be thrown out without damaging it. All I could do was to reduce
> the book data at the start of the pipeline to the minimal allowed set
> of elements. The minimal set that reproduces the problem includes:
> 
> book.tex                         generated by the docbook DSSSL;

this is no LaTeX document, I cannot run it, to see what's really
going on. Sorry, but I never used jadetex, don't know what it is
good for ..

Herbert