PS Full Form

PS stands for PostScript, which is a language of page description used in electronic publishing and desktop publishing. Mostly all high-end printers and many business-class laser printers support the Postscript file format. Anyone could send a postscript file to these printers through USB—no drivers requisite they’ll publish it correctly. It is a dynamically and concatenative typed programming language. From 1982 to 1984, five people worked at Adobe Systems and built it, including Ed Taft, John Warnock, Doug Brotz, Bill Paxton, and Charles Geschke. PostScript processors are still prevalent on high-end printers. Their use can reduce overall the CPU work required to print documents by transmitting PostScript photos from the computer to the printer.

Graphics in Postscript and Vector

In the same way that pixels on your computer monitor make images, printers use dots to create images. Some image file formats consider this by constructing a bitmap, which specifies which colour to use for each bit (pixel or dot) within the image. If your display or printer has the same pixels or dots as the image, this works nicely.

However, how would your printer print a bitmap with 72 pixels per inch (a basic computer display resolution before high definition) at 300 or 600 dots per inch (standard printer resolutions)? Vector images are the answer. Vector pictures employ abstractions that look remarkably similar to your high school geometry instead of defining where each pixel or dot belongs. A vector image does not specify which pixels to fill when drawing a line; it purely clarifies the line’s start and endpoints.

What Made Postscript So Popular?

Two of the company’s lead developers formed Adobe Systems to create and commercialise postscripts. You’ve probably heard of them. But it was a recommendation provided by another you might well have been aware of: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, that gave postscript its big advance.

Apple had to release its first laser printer, the LaserWriter, at the same time Adobe began selling Postscript for defining computer graphics. Jobs indicated that postscript might work well for a printer language, so Adobe tweaked it a little, and the LaserWriter was the first printer to be used.

Because LaserWriter was driven by postscript, it could print elevated pages than any of its competitors, giving it by far the most successful printer of its time and cementing postscript’s position as the industry standard for high-quality graphics. All laser printers that followed the LaserWriter utilised postscript well until the cost of affordable laser printers went so low that paying Adobe for postscript licensing costs became extremely expensive. Instead, low-cost printers used Windows or Mac to transform postscript documents into bitmap graphics, which they subsequently printed.

However, high-end printers continue to print directly in a postscript to ensure optimal quality, and many high-end word processing tools still expect to print in postscript.

Issues with Postscript

Postscript seems to have some shortcomings as a comprehensive programming language. One might be that applications are not virus-free and can include flaws. Although postscript viruses cannot infiltrate your computer, they can consume all of your computer’s CPU, and memory unless you stop the postscript file or shut off your printer. (This is inconvenient but not very hazardous.)

Another issue with programmes is that in order to get to the bits towards the end, you must first run the entire programme. As a result, to show the last page of a 300-page document, a machine must display all 299 pages before it, making postscript files appear slow.

Adobe addressed that issue with the Pdf File Format (PDF), which is equivalent to postscript but lacks the programming features and adds a few others. Most of today’s PDF-creating software generates postscripts before converting it to PDF. Some printers that print PDFs directly, on the other hand, convert the PDFs to postscript and print the postscript. Although postscript will be 30 years old in 2014, it remained the dominating language for rising printers and showed no indications of being replaced. Because so many high-end desktop publishing applications are still expected to print postscript, many high-end desktop publishing programmes still want to print postscript.

Conclusion

The letter PS stands for postscript. It is derived from the Latin word postscriptum, “written after.” A postscript is a thought added to letters (and occasionally other documents) after completion. We sometimes find ourselves remembering anything we want to include just after we’d signed off in the days of handwritten and typed letters. A PS came in handy in this situation. It’s also frequently used to add a smart or humorous postscript for effect. It can be used to emphasise a point or even as a defiant.