%%BoundingBox and %%Orientation in *.ps and *.eps files

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

Harald (and everyone else):

You mention in your patch comments

>Date: 2005-01-26 16:44
>Sender: harders
>
>- Remove the '%%Orientation: ...' line from all kinds of eps
>  graphics since it confuses ghostscript 8.5. In normal
>  postscript (landscape, portrait) this statement remains existing.

It is true that %%Orientation should not appear in an *eps file.

But in looking this up in the PostScript Reference Manual I also
notice that there is a distinction between

%%BoundingBox and %%PageBoundingBox

An *eps file should use only %%BoundingBox.  So we're OK there.

But the existence of %%PageBoundingBox seems directly relevant
to recent discussion on the use of "set size" before and
after "set term".  

I believe that the sequence
  set size <x>,<y>
  set term post
should alter the contents of %%BoundingBox

But the sequence
  set term post
  set size <x>,<y>
  plot "foo"
  set size <x2>,<y2>
  plot "baz"
should in principle be setting %%PageBoundingBox each time
the size is changed. At the end of the file, %%BoundingBox
is set to the maximum values ever used for individual pages.

Is it worth making this change?


-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195