XY to PDF on OS X--two steps

[Caballero Carlo.Caballero@xxxxxxxx]

Lately I've been experimenting with a translation others have been doing
for a long time--converting XyWrite files to PDFs. Robert and Carl have a
sophisticated routine involving Ghostscript or GSView. I wanted to adress
the problem with what Manuel Castelao once called the "classical method"
of producing a PostScript file in XyWrite and then using Adobe Acrobat's
"Distiller" to convert it into a PDF.
It turns out that this method can be simplified even further. And,
contrary to common wisdom, you can use either XY3 or XY4 to make
PostScript files and thence PDFs.

Here are the two steps (yes, only two):
1. TYF your Xywrite file after loading a good Postscript printer driver
(see below), and give the destination file the suffix "PS"; e.g.:

	TYF XYFILE,XYFILE.PS
2. Get this .PS file onto your Mac OSX environment and open it with
Preview. The file is automatically converted by Preview into a PDF.

You're done.
This method is astonishingly simple. I was using Distiller as an
intermediary, but it turns out it's unnecessary. Preview (a wonderfully
efficient utility, in my opinion) can do it on its own--and faster. I
don't have all the Adobe stuff on my personal machines because I find it
all rather bloated; I use a shared faculty computer when I want Acrobat
and Distiller. Because the .PS files I was creating in XyWrite took on
the iconic appearance of files that could open with Preview on the Mac
desktop, I couldn't resist clicking on it rather than walking over to
another computer, and to my surprise Preview did all the work I had been
using Distiller for earlier. Preview is preinstalled on your Macintosh;
no new software needed.
With regard to the printer files... On Manuel's advice, I started with
POST35N.PRN under XY4, and it works. I suspect POST47.PRN would work too,
but I haven't tested it yet.
Manuel didn't think the procedure would work in XY3, so initially I was
just opening my XY3 files in XY4 and adjusting them (UF,SZ,etc.). But XY3
die-hards can indeed use:

3POST29.PRN or
3POSTPLS.PRN
(These filenames are the ones posted on Bry's site; the originals--I
think--lack the initial "3")
There may be others that work in XY3, but two that consistently DO NOT
work are 3POST13.PRN and 3POST.PRN; they do not produce valid PostScript
files (at least for today's world)
Which of the two XY3 drivers above you choose to load may pertain to your
choice of fonts, and it's also true that XY3's irregular treatment of
italic/oblique faces needs to be watched (3POST29 treats MDRV as italics;
3POSTPLS treats MDBR as italics). Since I had a file with MDBR and was
lazy, I just loaded 3POSTPLS to get my italics true in the PDF. But lucky
for us both the files and the printer files may be altered ad infinitum to
match up.
After this experience, I was pondering how brilliant the inventors of
XyWrite were: here's XyWrite III+, vintage 1989, talking to a Mac OSX
utility, seamlessly, in 2008. I ignored TYF for 18 years, but there it
was, waiting for me; now it's the command of the day.

Carlo Caballero
thyrsus@xxxxxxxx