Re: misc/50116: MKREPRO: PostScript files include time stamp

[David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR misc/50116; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: misc/50116: MKREPRO: PostScript files include time stamp
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2015 06:49:35 +0000

 On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 09:25:01AM +0000, John Nemeth wrote:
  >  }   >  How about a postprocessing step that just does 'grep -v ^%%CreationDate:'?
  >  }  
  >  }  Will that break the file? I suppose probably not.
  >  
  >       "%" is the PostScript comment indicator.  From "PostScript Language
  >  Reference Manual  Second Edition":
  >  
  >  %%CreationDate:	<textline>
  >  
  >  		The comment indicates the date and time the document was
  >  		created.  Neither the date nor time need be in any standard
  >  		format.  This comment is meant to be used purely for
  >  		informational purposes, such as printing on banner pages.
  >  
  >  In other words, leaving it out won't break the file.  Hopefully there
  >  aren't any tools that demand it.  If there is, the tool is probably
  >  broken anyways.
 
 Yes, except that at least some programs examine or check the comment
 at the beginning of a postscript file to determine if it is, in fact,
 a postscript file.
 
 One possible way for this change to go wrong is that lpr and/or
 printers stop recognizing the files as postscript and print the
 postscript as text... probably this is not going to be an issue with
 just removing CreationDate. I hope.
 
 -- 
 David A. Holland
 dholland%netbsd.org@localhost