Using Postscript, I am unable to print more than 27 barcodes on a page (I need 36)

Question

We are a large retail business that uses Postscript for all price tags. I have designed this 36-up page of labels both as landscape and portrait (horizontal and vertical), with completely unique code. But as soon as I get to 27 barcodes, the entire page will not print. So I randomly remove 9 of them (it doesn't matter where from) and the page prints. The problem is that we need 36 barcodes. The sample picture contains a portion of the 8 1/2 x 11" page. The top of each label is a short description, followed by the price, a SKU with a barcode at the bottom.

Price Tag Sheet Sample

The following is the Postscript code that can be run on any Postscript printer. Notice at line 841, the first block of barcoding code is commented out with %%. Uncommenting them causes the page not to print:

%!
%%IncludeFeature: emulation(postscript)
%%IncludeFeature: input(lower)
%%IncludeFeature: output(face-up)
%%EndComments
/font {findfont exch scalefont setfont} bind def
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Answer 1

I haven't looked deeper, but the memory consumption sounds strange. It might be possible to write a better error reporter, but one thing I found right away is that I can count 107 gsave, but only 71 grestore. Are they all properly paired?

Answer 2

It sounds like a memory issue. You might try adding save ... restore either around each code or around groups of them (like columns maybe).

Also note that calling initgraphics shouldn't be necessary. It is called implicitly at the start of each page. Since you're just doing translate and scale, you can reset by using gsave ... grestore or matrix defaultmatrix setmatrix (although, considering the possible memory issue it would be better to grab the default matrix at the start /default matrix defaultmatrix def and use that to reset default setmatrix).

Also, your font setting code could be simplified to use selectfont, assuming a Level 2 (or higher) PostScript printer. If it's a Level 1 printer, then that doubly implicates a memory issue since garbage collection wasn't added until Level 2.