# Why are my post script commands not getting passed the LaTeX compiler?

The following MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pstricks}
\begin{document}

\begin{pspicture}
\rput{!240 6 div}(0,0){Hello World}
\end{pspicture}

\end{document}


is not able to parse the post script command. Why?

\usepackage{pstricks}
\SpecialCoor% activate !, *, >, **, ;, and |
...


the other question, where you have to strip the dimension:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pstricks}
\SpecialCoor
\begin{document}

\begin{pspicture}
\rput{!\number\paperheight\space \number\paperwidth\space
atan }(2,3){Hello World}
\rput[lb](0,1){\the\paperwidth : \number\paperwidth}
\rput[lb](0,0){\the\paperheight : \number\paperheight}
\end{pspicture}

\end{document}


\the\paperwidth is in pt and \number\paperwidth in sp (scaled point) 1pt=65536sp

• So, I need to activate \SpecialCoor even to use post scripts? I don't usually do that, but then again I usually call pst-eucl and other packages which might. – A.Ellett Sep 10 '13 at 18:05
• Some packages do it for you, eg pst-eucl, pstricks-add, ... – user2478 Sep 10 '13 at 18:06
• I suppose I could ask this in a second, but when I'm trying to pass something like \rput{! \paperheight\space \paperwidth\space div}(...) even with \SpecialCoor, I'm getting a post script error about /undefined in \paperheight. Why aren't my macros getting converted to the appropriate lengths before the postscript compiler sees them? (Or should I just ask this as a new question?) – A.Ellett Sep 10 '13 at 18:10
• Why was \SpecialCoor not activated by default so it frees us to do it manually? Does it hurt us? – kiss my armpit Sep 11 '13 at 7:09
• on slow machines it maybe take some time to scan values if you have a lot of it (> 1000) – user2478 Sep 11 '13 at 7:36