in reply to create ps file with PostScript::Simple - cannot print it out?

I can replicate your problem.  Seems you have to explicitly tell PostScript::Simple to not create EPS files (apparently that's the default). I.e. 

    my $p = new PostScript::Simple(papersize => "A4",
                                   colour => 1,
                                   eps => 0);  # <-- !

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EPS files won't have1 a PS showpage command (which tells the PS interpreter to actually print/output the internally rendered page), because they're meant for inclusion in other documents.

GhostScript-derived programs automatically add a showpage if there isn't one already (while real printers do not) — which explains why it does work in that case...

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1 or, more precisely, they shouldn't normally contain "showpage" — at least that's the theory (in that respect, PostScript::Simple is behaving correctly — what's a bit counter-intuitive, though, is that EPS output is the default...).

In real life, however, many programs do output a showpage even with EPS files - the one you're including does have one, for example - just in case someone wants to print the EPS file stand-alone, i.e. without wrapping it in a regular PS document. For the same reason, programs that include EPS files typically locally redefine the showpage command as a no-op (also done by PostScript::Simple), so the command doesn't cause any problems with the page being printed too early...

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Re^2: create ps file with PostScript::Simple - cannot print it out?
by cta (Acolyte) on Jul 17, 2008 at 19:18 UTC
    Thanks so much for pointing this out
    You're right.
    I didn't know about the showpage event missing in the EPS file.

    Do you know how to scale everything in the pagesize? Even though I specified it, I still missed few lines on the top and footer.

    Again , thanks
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      Do you know how to scale everything in the pagesize

      Either scale your EPS object ($e) as needed, and then place it slightly above y-pos zero (unless the origin is translated, [0,0] coincides with the physical left/bottom borders of the page (no margins), but most printers cannot fill the entire page, due to construction limits).  For example: 

      my $e = new PostScript::Simple::EPS(file => "body.eps", colour=>1);
$e->scale(0.95);
...
$p->importeps($e, 0,40);

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      Or use the alternative method importepsfile(...), which allows you to specify the lower left and upper right corner of a rectangle on the page into which the EPS content will be fit (i.e. autoscaled), e.g. 

      $p->importepsfile({overlap => 1}, "body.eps", 200,40, 200,800);

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      overlap => 1 keeps the aspect ratio as is, i.e. in this case, scaling will be done by the height (800 - 40 = 760), while the width (200 - 200 = 0) will be ignored.

      (BTW, the former method seems to have a bug (or peculiarity) if the lower left corner of the EPS bounding box isn't 0,0 (in your case it's 238,1 for example — which is fine per se). In that case, this bounding box offset is added to the position that you specify with importeps(). This doesn't make much sense, IMHO, as you'll need to know the bounding box coordinates to position the thing in a predictable way — which makes it unnecessarily cumbersome...   (the importepsfile() method, OTOH, does handle this correctly, apparently).)

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[d/l]
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        The eps file "body.eps" is used for testing only.
        But in my main program I have to a import 2 eps files : header and body. And I cannot control their sizes. If I adjust manually, there's certainly new case coming out of control.
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