[tex-k] patch to epstopdf

[William Bader]

> Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2016 08:46:55 +1300
> From: list0570 at paradise.net.nz
> Subject: Re: [tex-k] patch to epstopdf
> To: karl at freefriends.org
> CC: williambader at hotmail.com; tex-k at tug.org
> 
> On Thu 11 Feb 2016 08:11:38 NZDT +1300, Karl Berry wrote:
> 
> >     I attached a small patch to epstopdf that adds a "-gray" option to
> > produce a B&W PDF.
> >
> > Good idea, thanks!
> 
> Not so fast. Can we please maintain the distinction between colour,
> grey, and monochrome? B&W refers to monochrome (1 bit), grey refers to
> 8 bit (or 16 bit), and colour to 24 or 48 bit. The file sizes behave
> accordingly, and compression ratios for monochrome are really good,
> unless files are contructed lazily as grey although only 1 bit of the 8
> bit storage width is actually used.
> 
> So if adding an option for grey in a not very big patch, how about also
> adding an option for monochrome, like -mono or -bw, with the appropriate
> PS commands?
> 
> Volker
> -- 
> Volker Kuhlmann
> http://volker.top.geek.nz/	Please do not CC list postings to me.


My issue is that I am sending newspaper pages to an imager, and I don't want a color photo, for example, to trigger a CMYK separation on an interior page that can't print color.  I am not doing the color to grayscale conversion to reduce the size.
I usually identify pages as either color or B&W, but I should have been more careful in the terminology.
In any case, I am not sure if ghostscript has an option to control the number of bits per sample. I tried a few options, but I still got 8 bit grayscale instead of 1 bit. The ghostscript pstopdf documentation is at http://www.ghostscript.com/doc/current/Ps2pdf.htm
If you can find a gs option that makes 1 bit B&W, I can revise my patch to add a -bw flag.
Regards, William


 		 	   		  
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