Search code examples
postscript

What does "downloadcode" mean in postscript?

I am learning postscript.i have seen a piece of code

%%DownLoadCode 微
3 75 m
(!) [0 ] 1 fxs

Is the line of downloadcode only a comment? It seems to intent to write 微 on the page, but when i execute the program, i only get ! on the page. I cannot find more information about downloadcode in the postscript.Anyone know it? Thank you.

Solution

  • It is a comment (line begins with a '%') so it doesn't mean anything at all to the PostScript interpreter. It may well mean something to whoever produced the PostScript, but I suspect only they can answer that.

    And no, it doesn't write the glyph on the page, its just a comment, it doesn't do anything.

    I presume that, prior to the quoted fragment above, the PostScript program defines a procedure called /fxs and that that procedure renders the character code 0x21 (ASCII '!') to the page using the current font. The array and integer parameters are probably used for spacing the glyphs but with only one character, its impossible to say.