encapsulated PostScript

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encapsulated PostScript (EPS) A format for importing and exporting PostScript files, usually used for illustrations. An EPS file is a single-page PostScript file, similar to any PostScript file but with certain extra conditions. In particular, an EPS file has to contain a bounding box comment describing the size of the illustration. The file can contain graphics or text or a combination of the two and may contain embedded fonts. Files of this type can be inserted into a page on a desktop publishing application, and the graphic will be embedded in an output PostScript file of the page. In general, a basic EPS file appears as a gray rectangle in the screen view of the page. For positioning purposes, it is convenient to have an EPS file with an embedded bitmap preview, giving a low-resolution representation of the illustration. There are various ways of doing this. On Mackintosh machines, EPSF files are commonly used. These have a PICT preview in the resource fork of the file. On PCs it is usual to have an embedded low-resolution TIF file as a preview. EPSI is an Adobe specification for a device-independent ASCII bitmap preview.