During my long career in publishing, eps files were always prepared for vector art so they could be more universally opened in assorted art programs for future editing by a print shop. It was like the “doc” standard for text files–universal. Also, PDFs usually retain the white artboard/background around an image. It caused more than a few headaches for young designers unaware of the problem until print time. EPS-formatted images always had a transparent background, so things like logos and icons could be easily placed over colored backgrounds. It was just a safer format for any potential future uses of the file. A modern PSD or AI file later supported background transparency too, and became an alternative.
It’s sad to see Apple drop ANY eps support. I sorta understand PS fonts since they’re not cross platform and are so highly integrated into programs. But freestanding EPS art files? Too bad about the fonts; I have a large collection of wonderful postscript fonts, some which didn’t make it to OpenType versions. But since I’m going to be stuck in Monterey for awhile with my 2013 trashcan, maybe I will finally make the time to convert those to OpenType.
Huh, this just brought back a memory. There was someone I’d been friendly with via Usenet (remember that?) for a number of years, and she’d just put OS X on her Mac. This was end of 2005/start of 2006. She was having trouble with the Classic emulator–important (for her) Classic applications that she’d long used and had found no OS X equivalent wouldn’t print properly or at all.
I had some one or two of those applications and I played with them and found a workaround: in the Classic Print dialog you could select Destination: File rather than Printer. That would create a .ps (PostScript) file that you could double-click in Finder and would then open in Preview and easily print.
I don’t think it’s PS fonts, I think it’s raw .ps files. In over 40 years in the industry we very rarely used them. EPS was common 20-25 years ago for transparency, but once pdf became more mature it essentially usurped any need for EPS. It’s a shame it’s being dropped though, there would be millions of pieces of clip art stil stored as EPS files. We still have dozens of those CD clip art collections collecting dust.
I used to use eps because Stata has several options for outputting graphics one of which is .eps which was easiest for LaTeX. pdf could be used with pdfLaTex. Using eps with pdfLatex was a pain because it would convert the files to pdf, but wasn’t clever enough to know that it needed to create a new one if the eps was changed. the problem with pdfLaTeX is some LaTeX packages wont work with it. I now use R and RMarkdown and life is a lot easier.
It is good to know that GraphicConverter will open the eps. Sometimes when you include one in LaTeX it will look a mess, so it is good to open it and see if the file is OK.
I’m not pleased at all by this. I frequently use the CLI program abcm2ps, which converts text-based abc music notation 1 to Postscript to display the output in normal staff notation. Once upon a time, I also had to have some Postscript to PDF program (such as Ghostscript) to get it into the final form, but then I discovered that Preview would do the job for me more simply. One less CLI program to maintain!
Thanks for passing along the tip about Skim, which looks like it will work just fine. I really didn’t relish having to deal with Ghostscript and all its dependencies again.
If you work with a lot of scripts on Catalina or later, Peek’s $7.99 license is well worth it to get Quick Look syntax highlighting, too!
Since we’re sort of on the subject, there are several third party apps that quietly include useful Quick Look capabilities, like Pacifist, which can open macOS .pkg files, .dmg images, .zip, .tar, and other archives. See also Adam’s 2016 article on Quick Look.
It might be worth contacting Lemke Software to see if there is a possibility of customizing or increasing the resolution of the EPS preview in GraphicConverter. They’ve been remarkably responsive to questions and requests in my experience.