What Are PostScript Files?
PostScript files are plain text files that contain PostScript code. PostScript is a page description language developed by the Adobe corporation for specifying how a printer should render a page of text or graphics. It is a stack-based, postfix programming language (which means that its syntax resembles that of a “reverse Polish notation” calculator) that performs calculations and draws images; PostScript files are not simply bitmapped representations of graphics (although they can contain bitmaps). By describing how the image is drawn, rather than providing a pixelized representation of it, PostScript files can be printed on a variety of printers or viewed on a variety of machines, always optimally using the resolution available. PostScript files usually have names that end with the suffix “.ps”, although Encapsulated PostScript files (which can contain the description of a graphic no more than one page in size) usually end with a “.eps” suffix.
