experience with advanced techniques resolves long-standing Postscript problem plaguing a technology group
When I started work at Carnegie Group, I was introduced to FrameMaker. We used version 4 on a UNIX system, and we used a freeware screen capture utility called xv.
My first assignment was to work on several chapters of a user manual written with FrameMaker. When I opened the chapter files to work on them, I noticed that gray boxes appeared on the screen where the screen shots should have been. The same screen shots printed fine on paper. Being new to FrameMaker, I questioned the purpose of the gray boxes.
I was told that no one really knew what caused the "gray blobs" as they were referred to. The in-house FrameMaker expert didn't know and none of the developers knew. I was very uncomfortable with the gray blobs because the fact that the graphics could only be seen after printing them meant a good deal of time was spent printing to make sure the graphic showed the correct content, was placed correctly. I decided to see if I couldn't solve the gray blob riddle.
When we saved the screen captures using xv, we saved them to encapsulated postscript (EPS) format. Having some previous experience with postscript files, I opened one of the EPS files in a text editor so I could examine it. I noticed the Preview attribute was missing from the top of the file. A little research on the Internet confirmed that many applications required the Preview attribute in order to display the contents on screen. I then turned my attention to xv and searched through its many settings.
As I expected, there was a Preview option and it was currently not selected. I selected the Preview option, captured a new screen shot, and viewed the new EPS file in the text editor. The Preview attribute was now in the postscript file. It was time for the acid test.
I started FrameMaker and imported the new EPS in the usual manner. The graphic displayed on screen! The mystery was solved. All we had to do was select the Preview option in xv. A simple solution to a simple problem. All it required was a little resourcefulness.