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by throwpdfloop 1525 days ago
But PDF (or maybe PDF/X) is just as good nowadays?
2 comments

PDF is just as good in the sense of being able to represent the documents people want to (arguably better, if only for transparency, compression (including JPEG), and (usually!) the ability to search for and select text). PDF does have many other additional features that people disagree on the value of, many of which are not supported by most PDF viewers. Being a full programming language, PostScript is technically much more powerful in many ways, but it turns out that's no longer very useful for most purposes (computers are much more powerful*, storage is cheap, networks are fast, most documents are viewed on screen, etc.).

* I've heard of people writing programs in PostScript to take advantage of printers' fast vector processors instead of running them on (at the time) comparatively slower PC CPUs, a bit like the early days of GPGPU.

You can search into PS files too. On viewing then in a computer, GV+GhostScript will do perfectly fine.

Oh, and you can run Zmachine V3 games on an interpreter written in PostScript.

Are there common cases in which a printshop with up-to-date equipment would prefer PostScript to PDF?
PDF/X is just a PDF with interactivity/JavaScript/forms removed and the layout instructions rationalized and colorspace for RIP fir commercial printers
Does "layout instructions" refer to the paper/trim dimensions?