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Rating: 
Summary: Too much graphics, not enough text
Review: Although I found this book to be accurate, I did not enjoy it. Concepts jumped from chapter to chapter without any order. The index is totally lacking. It covered graphics completely but failed on handling bitmaps. It left text formatting to your imagination. As a programmer, I need to create reports. This book left me out in the cold. If you want to manipulate graphics using PostScript this book is for you. If you want to produce a spreadsheet on PostScript look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough definition
Review: Although this book could be useful to the person who cares nothing of how things work, I found it extremely lacking in the area of defining the way Postscript works. From the outset, the book shows many examples which the authors touts as the best way to learn something. However, many of the examples used have little or no explanation of some of the cryptic commands contained within. You end up wasting a lot of time scratching your head trying to find out *what* is going on. It becomes a matter of wading through the entire book since many terms are not even listed in the index. A glossary and perhaps a command reference would have been extremely useful in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not enough definition
Review: Although this book could be useful to the person who cares nothing of how things work, I found it extremely lacking in the area of defining the way Postscript works. From the outset, the book shows many examples which the authors touts as the best way to learn something. However, many of the examples used have little or no explanation of some of the cryptic commands contained within. You end up wasting a lot of time scratching your head trying to find out *what* is going on. It becomes a matter of wading through the entire book since many terms are not even listed in the index. A glossary and perhaps a command reference would have been extremely useful in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: wonderful book for PostScript novices
Review: In fact, I could barely get through it.My introduction to PostScript was through the Language Reference Manual and the Supplements. Plus it was quite helpfil that I was surrounded by PostScript gurus. By the time I got this book it read like a Dr. Suess novel. Bored, I was. Skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't benefit much by reading it
Review: In fact, I could barely get through it. My introduction to PostScript was through the Language Reference Manual and the Supplements. Plus it was quite helpfil that I was surrounded by PostScript gurus. By the time I got this book it read like a Dr. Suess novel. Bored, I was. Skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Superb examples and documentation; much easier than Adobe.
Review: PostScript by Example may be your best introduction to this somewhat obscure page description language. I credit McGilton and Campione for providing what little I understand of PostScript object and stack creation and manipulation. Everything you need to know about basic syntax, construction of Bezier paths, use of fonts, graphic transformation and use of dictionaries is here, and it's properly commented, too! If you absolutely HAVE to code or troubleshoot in PostScript and are wading through Adobe's Red Book (PostScript Language Reference Manual, 2nd Edition) or Blue Book (PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook), then take a break, accelerate yourself and read PostScript by Example. Unfortunately, through no fault of the authors, some of what they have built is not really useable. The information in chapter ten on creating a user-defined (Type 3) font has no bearing in any PostScript interpreter environment I can access. This includes, Illustrator 6 and 7, Tailor 2 and Acrobat Distiller 3.0.2. If I'm doing something wrong, I'd like to see where, but in point of fact the Type 3 font information in the Red Book doesn't work either in those environments. This, as I have mentioned, is not the fault of the writers, who cannot be held accountable for changes in the software since 1993. It would, however, be nice to see an update to this book, especially inasmuch as PostScript is now upgrading to level 3. If McGilton and Campione could be pulled away from UNIX (it's only an OS) and Java (it's not a standard and won't be for a while), then we can get back to basics.
Rating:
Summary: Wrong definitions
Review: The book provides too many examples. Some of them (30%) are useful.
The rest are boring. The definition of the Current Transformation matrix is wrong (colums and rows are exchanged) showing that the author has no idea about linear algebra and matrix products.
However this is the only book available for me, so I had to learn
PS with it.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful book for PostScript novices
Review: This is an extremely helpful book, *if* you are a little familiar with PostScript and want to know more. Although it suffers a bit from lack of organization, the subsections are fairly self-contained and are generally extremely clear. As a hobbyist, my primary interest is in PostScript drawing rather than text manipulation, and this book has good coverage of drawing and graphics. My understanding of PostScript was greatly deepened by this book. (I finally understand dictionaries!) PostScript level 2 is discussed in some detail, which is unusual among the available texts. I have looked at several books and have not found a better intermediate level text.
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