WSDos files can be printed with Adobe Acrobat Reader if one uses a Postscript Printer driver and software which converts the Postscript file to Acrobat Reader format. This enables one with brain dead printers (no, or minimal, resident fonts) to continue using WSDos.

Dr. Jeffrey Race creates the Adobe PDF files in the following manner:

REQUIREMENTS
1 WS (any version)

2 Apple Laserwriter PDF (meaning Printer Description File, NOT Portable Document Format)

3 Type 1 fonts desired to use and included in the Apple PDF (I have never used any beside the base 35 fonts but assume it could be done by manually tweaking the ps file)

4 Adobe Acrobat Distiller. (You have to buy this; I paid $2 for V 2.0 and $20 for V 2.1 at the MIT radio amateur flea market. Later versions available at ebay.)

PROCEDURE
1 In WS, open new file, select Apple PDF with ^P?.

2 Input data and images to file in usual way, selecting fonts as you go along with ^P=.  NOTE: With page preview, the screen representations will be wrong for special characters, but the printed output will be right. This is why I created the PDF files now on Phil's and Mike's websites: you can determine the correct font to select and upper ASCII character to input using ALT-nnn on numeric keypad).

   If spacing is not exactly right e.g. for columnar layouts with proportional fonts, you drop to a smaller font for the SPACES.

3 Print the file to disk. It is a completely ASCII file; humans can read it and ps programmers can actually write these files with a text editor!

4 Open distiller, select the ps file, and convert to PDF.  Note: you can use Ghostscript but the conversions are reportedly not as faithful as with Distiller, and may be larger as well.

5 Go into Exchange (comes with Distiller) and input Document Info. (This is optional but it helps the web spiders to index the document.)

DISTILLER GOTCHAS
1 Embed the fonts. The PDF file will enlarge but the person reading it will see a faithful image.

2 Select the proper dpi for images according to your output purpose e.g. web viewing vs printing.

RESOURCES
1 PDFZONE is a newsgroup with a lot of high-power brains from all over the world.

2 WWW.TINAJA.COM is an excellent resource on Postscript (which you really have to understand if you want to understand PDF).  But you don't have to understand anything if you just follow these directions. It is really very simple and fast.  I create all technical documents for my websites this way.

Phil Griffin-Allwood creates the Adobe PDF in the following manner.

I prefer to use Aladdin Ghostscript (released under the Aladdin Free Public license which allows free use, copying, and distribution by end users, but does not allow commercial distribution.). To use Adobe Acrobat Reader to print WSDos files using a Postscript printer driver:

[1] ========== Obtain the following programs ==========

[1.a] WSDos printer driver. Either of the generic Postscript drivers which come with WS7d will do. (I personally use the HP4SiMX driver which is part of the HP Laser extra printer database or the IBM4039 Postscript driver which IBM distributed.)

Having a Postscript driver installed will permit one to create Postscript file containing the following fonts:

     Avant Garde
     Bookman
     Courier
     Helvetica Narrow
     Helvetica
     New Century School
     Palatino
     Symbol
     Times
     Zpf Chancery
     Zpf Dingbats

If one has the WordStar screen fonts (they come with WS7), they can be installed into FontID.CTL. They may need to be added manually at the end of FontID.CTL. All one needs to add is the WSF file name, numbered sequentially. For example:

     17=BOOKMNB ,
     18=BOOKMNI ,
     19=BOOKMNJ ,
     20=BOOKMNR ,
     21=HEL850B ,
     22=HEL850I ,
     23=HEL850J ,
     24=HEL850R ,
     25=HELVNAB ,
     26=HELVNAI ,
     27=HELVNAJ ,
     28=HELVNAR ,
     29=NEWCNTB ,
     30=NEWCNTI ,
     31=NEWCNTJ ,
     32=NEWCNTR ,
     33=PALATNB ,
     34=PALATNI ,
     35=PALATNJ ,
     36=PALATNR ,
     37=ZAPFDBR ,
     38=ZAPFCHI ,
     39=SYMBOLR ,
     40=AVGARDR ,
     41=AVGARDB ,
     42=AVGARDI ,
     43=AVGARDJ ,

When Advanced Page Preview is run for the first time after the WSF fonts names are added, the numerical references after the screen fonts names will be inserted.

To automate the process of printing to file, I used PDFEdit to redirect the print output to my system TEMP directory with the name WS.PS. To do this start PDFEdit. At the "PDF Editor Main Menu" select "Additional modification"; then pick "Printer output device". Under "Select Output Type" pick "Redirection file". You will be asked to "Enter name of redirection file or device: Type new value". If you enter "*.ps", when you print the Postscript file will be created with the same name as the WS file, but with the PS extension. If you want to automate the process, enter the name of the temp older and "WS.PS".

Of course, you can enter a file name each time you print a file by typing a name in the "Redirect to" blank.

[1.b] Download Aladdin's Ghostscript 6.01 from:

     http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/cd.html

There are versions for Win32 (works on Win9x, WinNT, and Win3x with Win32s1.30 installed) and OS/2. The last DOS version was 5.2 and will do the job, but does not handle the full 35 Postscript fonts as Type 1 fonts.

Ghostscript is a Postscript language interpreter and comes with clones of the 35 default Postscript fonts.

[1.c] Download GhostView 3.4 from:

     http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/cd.html

This provides a graphical interface for viewing, printing and converting Postscript files.

[1.d] If you wish to use the Postscript fonts included with the Ghostscript package under Windows, obtain Adobe Type Manager 4 Lite from

     http:\\www.adobe.com

[1.e] Download Adobe's Acrobat Reader for your system from

     http:\\www.adobe.com

[2] ========== Printing using GhostView ==========

When finished preparing your WS file, use ^PrintScreen to save the file and print it using the Postscript printer driver.

Open the WS.PS using GhostView. GhostView is still buggy when printing a file created with WS, so select Convert from the File menu. In the Convert option box choose the pdfwrite option and select 1.2 as the PDF version under Win3x and select 1.3 under Win9x.

This should create a Adobe PDF file which can be read and printed using Adobe Acrobat Reader. The files can be printed using GhostView, but I find the quality is not good as when produced with Acrobat Reader.

[3] ========== Printing using Scripts ==========

Ghostscript comes with scripts for command line conversion of Postscript files to Acrobat files. Since I wanted the ability both to automate the conversion of a WSDos printed Postscript file to Acrobat PDF and to selectively do it, I created custom scripts.

If Ghostscript is not installed to Drive C, then the following need to be added to Config.SYS on all systems:

     set GS_LIB=E:\aladdin\gs6.01\lib;
     set GS_FONTPATH=E:\aladdin\fonts;

[3.1] Win9x (including WinME)

For Win9x I created the following BAT file to convert a Postscript file to an Acrobat PDF file. I keep the file in the Aladdin\Bin folder.

WSPDFRUN.BAT

     C:\Aladdin\gs6.01\bin\GSWIN32c.EXE -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE#pdfwrite -r600 -sOutputFile#%1.PDF -dCompatibilityLevel#1.2 -c save pop -f %1.PS

The above is all one line.

By using the single variable the Postscript is converted to an Acrobat PDF with the same name.

To automate the conversion of a file saved to the Windows Temp folder, I created the following BAT file.

WS2PDF.BAT

     c:
     cd \aladdin\gs6.01\bin
     call wspdfrun.bat c:\windows\temp\ws
     "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 4.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" c:\windows\temp\ws.pdf

One line begins "C:\Program and ends with ws.pdf.

If I created an Postscript file with a unique name, I use WSPDFRun.BAT to convert the Postscript file.

If I created a WS.PS file in the Windows/Temp folder, I use WS2PDF.BAT to convert the file and open Acrobat Reader so I can print it.

By creating a PIF for WS2PDF.BAT (DOS shortcut for the BAT file), I can quickly convert and print a file created using the Postscript printer driver.

If one uses Profinder the following can be added to menu:

     Z - Print WordStar PDF,call c:\aladdin\gs6.01\bin\ws2pdf.bat
                  c:
                  cd \ws\options
                  pf ~d~p
 

[3.2] OS/2

For OS/2 I created the following CMD files.

WS2PDF.CMD

     c:
     cd \aladdin\gs6.01\bin
     gsos2.exe -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE#pdfwrite -sOutputFile#%1.pdf -dCompatibilityLevel#1.2 -c save pop -f %1.ps

One line begins gsos2 and ends with %1.ps.

By using the single variable the Postscript is converted to an Acrobat PDF with the same name.

To automatically convert a WS.PS file saved in the OS/2 Temp folder, I created a program object for the CMD line with c:\temp\ws.ps in the parameters line.

To print the converted file, I created a program object for Adobe Acrobat Reader with c:\temp\ws.pdf in the parameters line.

[3.3] Win3x

If version 1.30 of Win32s is installed, version 6.01 of Ghostscript for Win32 can be used. Only GSWin32.EXE can be used (GSWin32c.EXE will only work with Win9x). Because of this, Ghostscript on Win3x systems can only be run from a program item or use a script language such as that which comes with PCTools for Windows.

Win3x permits shorter command lines in the program items so the following are necessary in Config.SYS

     SET GS_DEVICE=pdfwrite
     SET GS_OPTIONS=-dCompatibilityLevel#1.2

Again to save space in the command line, the WS.PS file needs to be saved to a root directory. The command line I use in the program item is

     gswin32.exe -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sOutputFile=c:\ws.pdf -c save pop -f c:\ws.ps

The above is one line.

To print the converted file, create a Program Item for Acrobat Reader which opens c:\ws.pdf.

I use PCTools for Windows scripts for converting Postscript files with unique names.