OffendingCommand: .setblendmode

[mauvia52]

I am on Imac with MACOS Ventura. I have Acobat Pro:

Architecture: arm64

Processor: Apple M1

Build: 23.1.20093.0

AGM: 7.0.3

CoolType: 8.1.1

JP2K: 4.0.0.52132

I have a simple eps file which I can visualize online through different eps viewers BUT if I try to open it with Acrobat Pro and convert it to a pdf I get no result, with warning

%%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: .setblendmode ]%%

Stack:
/Compatible


%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

What could be the reason of this (unexpected) problem?

Thanks

Maurizio

[mauvia52]

I add a copy of my eps file.

Maurizio

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 163 253 448 538
%%HiResBoundingBox: 163.767717 253.767717 447.232283 537.232283
%%Creator: Asymptote 2.852.85
%%CreationDate: 2023.03.27 14:23:42
%%Pages: 1
%%Page: 1 1
/Setlinewidth {0 exch dtransform dup abs 1 lt {pop 0}{round} ifelse
idtransform setlinewidth pop} bind def
gsave
 164.017717 254.017717 translate
newpath 0 0 moveto
 282.964567 282.964567 lineto
/Compatible .setblendmode
0 setgray
0.5 Setlinewidth
1 setlinecap
1 setlinejoin
10 setmiterlimit
stroke
grestore
showpage
%%EOF

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

.setblendmode seens to be something that Ghostscript uses, and is not a valid PostScript function. Without seeing the file and seeing if this function is defined in the EPS file, it's impossible to say what the problem is. Can you share the file? 

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

I was typing my message when you posted the contents of your EPS file. As I said, .setblendmode is not valid PostScript, it is somethign that Ghostscript uses. You can find more information here, in section 4.1: https://ghostscript.com/docs/9.56.1/Language.htm

What are you trying to accomplish? 

[mauvia52]

Thanks.

I am using Asymptote (https://asymptote.sourceforge.io) which seems to be using ghostscript 10.0.0 for producing eps output. If I tell Asymptote to output directly pdf (which is what I usually do) I get a perfect pdf (from the same code). This was just an experiment because for a number of reasons I do sometime need eps pictures (not this one...)

So is gs wrong?

Maurizio

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

It depends on your context: PostScritpt is a language created by Adobe and they still market the PostScript interpreter that goes with it in the form of Acrobat Distiller and of course the interpreters built into printers. Adobe's PostScript reference manaul does not conain anything about this operator. So in this sense, gs is wrong. However, Ghostscript is an independent implementation of this language and they have added a few Ghostscript specific operators, and as long as you know that your file will be processed by Ghostscript, it's not wrong. If you want to create true PostScript and EPS files, then you cannot use any of these interpreter specific operators.

[mauvia52]

I am surprised that some online viewers will show me the right picture, and some will not.

Maurizio

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

There is a good chance that you can use this file to test how different converters or viewers are implemented: The ones that show this correctly are all Ghostscript based.