Is it possible to insert a PDF file into a PostScript file?

Question

I am the developer of several DB/400 to PostScript drivers for a specialty packaging print company.
I would like to insert, size, and position, component files (graphics) that exist as PDF files without converting them to EPS files first.
Are there any PostScript commands/examples that demonstrate this ability, similar to pdfmark for inserting html and javascript actions into a PostScript stream?

Answer 1

Dov,
Yes, this would be an input component of our workflow.
Right now the conversions are handled manually, usually through the use of Illustrator, mostly because the incoming pdf's have not been uniform or included several graphic components that needed to be controlled separately, or were "sloppy". Recently however, a situation has developed where a 3rd party is providing discrete, uniform pdf files for multiple clients that we will need to input efficiently into our system.
What I envision after your response of the impossibility of wrapping a PDF inside a PostScript stream is as follows:
- Normally, 100's of pdf's arriving from the 3rd party would be dropped into a "hot" folder for batch processing.
- A client "key" would trigger the hot folder application to act on the pdf's, prepending the client key to each file name.
- Batch processing would then accomplish the pdf to eps conversion.
- The eps files would be scanned for indexing data such as color information and bounding box, and, if necessary, color remapping could be done here too.
- The eps files would then be moved to our eps library and the indexing data would be added to the eps library database.
The only thing we aren't doing right now is the automated prepending of the client "key" and the pdf to eps conversion. At least in the short term I plan to see about the viability of converting the pdf's to eps using a batch action in Illustrator. I know I can write the "key" prepending code, as well as the eps parsing/color editing code.
Thanks,
Marvin