386BSD 0.1 development
[unix-history] / usr / othersrc / public / ghostscript-2.4.1 / readme.doc
Copyright (C) 1990, 1992 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved.
Distributed by Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of Ghostscript.
Ghostscript is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. No author or distributor accepts responsibility
to anyone for the consequences of using it or for whether it serves any
particular purpose or works at all, unless he says so in writing. Refer
to the Ghostscript General Public License for full details.
Everyone is granted permission to copy, modify and redistribute
Ghostscript, but only under the conditions described in the Ghostscript
General Public License. A copy of this license is supposed to have been
given to you along with Ghostscript so you can know your rights and
responsibilities. It should be in a file named COPYING. Among other
things, the copyright notice and this notice must be preserved on all
copies.
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This file, readme.doc, describes problems and new features in the
current release of Ghostscript. This file describes version 2.4.1 of
Ghostscript.
For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see
README.
New features
============
Note: this is not a complete list of new features. See the most recent
section of history.doc for full details.
The SunView driver works again.
The SuperVGA drivers, except for the VESA driver, now work with the
32-bit MS-DOS executable.
You can use \ in file names on the command line on MS-DOS.
You no longer need to set GS_RUN_EXE=dos4gw when using the Watcom
compiler.
Dictionaries expand automatically when they fill up. (No more dictfull
errors.)
There are new drivers that produce all six types of Portable Bitmap /
Graymap / Pixmap output. (writeppmfile is still supported, but it
will be removed in the next release.)
There are new drivers that produce three flavors of PCX files
(black-and-white, EGA/VGA-style 16-color, and SuperVGA-style
256-color), and two flavors of GIF files (black-and-white and
256-color).
Known problems
==============
Interpreter
-----------
The interactive interpreter requires that every statement fit on a line,
i.e., you can't have an unpaired ( or {.
On a MS-DOS system, interrupting Ghostscript by typing ^C doesn't restore
the display mode.
Operators
---------
The Ghostscript language does not include the following operators of the
PostScript language:
resetfile
banddevice, renderbands
The following are not implemented completely:
%statementedit (file name): interpreted as equivalent to
%lineedit.
Most of the new color operators, particularly those that support the CMYK
color model, are implemented as Ghostscript language procedures, and they
essentially emulate CMYK using RGB.
The following operators that expect arrays won't accept packed arrays:
definefont (Subrs (type 1 fonts))
setdash (dash pattern)
setcachedevice (bounding box)
makeimagedevice (palette)
The file operator only recognizes modes r and w, not the newer modes r+,
w+, a, and a+.
Limitations
-----------
Floating point exceptions terminate Ghostscript, rather than producing a
rangecheck error.
Some access checks aren't implemented.
copypage does nothing in the MS-DOS implementation, and merely
synchronizes the X connection in the Unix implementation. showpage is a
procedure that does a copypage and then beeps the bell and waits for the
user to hit a key. (copypage does do the right thing for printers.)
Graphics bugs
-------------
strokepath produces incorrect output for dashed lines.
The implementation only looks at the PaintType of the font when doing
show, not when doing charpath. Because of this, stroked fonts don't work
correctly with charpath.
arcto gives an error for negative radii.
Halftone screens that aren't parallel to the coordinate axes may produce
incorrect output: the cell is rotated, but not the tiling pattern.
Changing the contents of the Encoding array or the Metrics dictionary of a
font dynamically doesn't produce the expected result (may have no effect)
if character caching is enabled.
Halftone patterns "flip over" at the 50% coverage point, producing
anomalous visual effects on some color devices.
We have not been able to test 2-, 4-, and 16-bit memory devices as
thoroughly as 1-, 8-, 24-, and 32-bit devices; please report any
problems.
Non-graphics bugs
-----------------
restore doesn't properly undo currentgstate.
copy doesn't handle gstates.