Copyright (C) 1989, 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
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* This file describes version 2.4.1 of Ghostscript. *
*****************************************************
******** An overview of Ghostscript ********
Ghostscript is the name of a set of software that provides:
- An interpreter for the Ghostscript language, which very
closely resembles the PostScript (TM) language; and
- A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library) that
implement the graphics capabilities that appear as primitive
operations in the Ghostscript language.
The Ghostscript language interpreter and library are written entirely
in C, with some assembly-language accelerators for MS-DOS platforms.
Currently, Ghostscript is known to run on the following platform
- IBM PC and compatibles with EGA, VGA, SuperVGA, or compatible
graphics under MS-DOS 3.1, 3.3, or 5.0;
- A wide variety of Unix systems using X Windows version 11,
release 3, 4, and 5, including Sun-3, Sun-4, Sun-386i,
Sun SPARCStation 1; generic 80386 machines running 386/ix;
H-P 9000/300 and 9000/800; DECStation 2100 and 3100; VAX
running Ultrix; Sequent Symmetry; Convex C1 and C2;
Tektronix 4300; SGI Iris Indigo;
- Sun workstations (Sun-3, SPARC, Sun-386i) running SunView;
- VAX, VMS with X11R3/4/5, gcc and DEC C compiler (DEC C compiler
version 3.1 or later is required).
It is very likely that Ghostscript will run under other versions of
MS-DOS, and other versions of Unix that support X11, but it has not
been tested in these environments. Ghostscript does NOT run well on
PC-compatibles with Hercules display cards: text and graphics output
interfere with each other.
Ghostscript has also been ported to the Apple Macintosh and to the
Acorn Archimedes. For information on the Macintosh port, contact
Martin Fong (fong@erg.sri.com). For information on the Archimedes
port, contact David Elworthy (David.Elworthy@cl.cam.ac.uk).
******** Documentation overview ********
All the file names mentioned in the documentation, except for README,
are in lower case, which is the usual convention for Unix systems.
On MS-DOS systems, all file names are actually upper-case.
Files of interest to most users (both previous and new)
-------------------------------------------------------
> readme.doc - information about problems and new features in the
If you have used a previous release of Ghostscript, you should also
read any more recent sections of history.doc.
Files of particular interest to new users
-----------------------------------------
> fonts.doc - information about the fonts distributed with Ghostscript.
> language.doc - A description of the Ghostscript language.
> make.doc - how to install, compile and link Ghostscript.
> psfiles.doc - information about the .ps files distributed with
Ghostscript (other than fonts).
> use.doc - information about to use Ghostscript.
Files of interest to fewer users
--------------------------------
> drivers.doc - the interface between Ghostscript and device drivers.
> hershey.doc - information about the Hershey fonts, which are the
basis of some of the Ghostscript fonts.
> history.doc - history of changes in Ghostscript releases.
> humor.doc - a humorous comment on Ghostscript contributed by a net.person.
> lib.doc - information about the Ghostscript library.
> man.doc - a possible Un*x 'man' page for Ghostscript.
******** Trouble reporting ********
If you have problems with Ghostscript, and you have access to Usenet
news, we suggest you post your question to gnu.ghostscript.bug.
There are hundreds of Ghostscript user sites all over the world, and
often another user will be able to help you.
If you wish to contact Aladdin Enterprises directly, you may reach us
...{uunet,decwrl}!aladdin!ghost
If you call on the phone, you will usually be talking to an answering
machine. In this case, please leave a message with your name and
phone number and the best time for us to return the call.
Because Ghostscript is distributed so widely, Aladdin Enterprises
doesn't have the resources to respond to everyone by e-mail. We only
promise to respond to e-mail from the following classes of users:
- Beta testers who have actually given us at least one report on
some beta version supplied to them.
- People developing drivers that are for, or applications that
are based on, Ghostscript and that will be made freely available.
- People who express serious interest in commercial licensing
We also appreciate and welcome detailed, well-documented bug reports
from anyone, especially if they include a fix.
We do read gnu.ghostscript.bug and respond to significant problems
reported there, as time permits.
If you report a problem by e-mail, please specify which version of
Ghostscript you are running, and the hardware, operating system,
window system, and C compiler you are using, and be as specific as
you can about the problem -- this will help us a lot in tracking it
down. We want Ghostscript to be a high-quality product, and will do
our best to fix any reported problem.
Given the choice between the Internet and the UUCP address, remember
that the Internet is not to be used for general commercial traffic:
if you aren't sure whether you or your organization can use the
Aladdin Enterprises owns or has access to the following hardware and
80486 PC, MS-DOS 5.0, Borland C++ 3.0 (and several older versions);
color SuperVGA display; Epson-compatible printer
(the printer also is compatible with the IBM Proprinter);
various H-P printers; Canon BubbleJet.
SPARCstation, SunOS 4.0, cc and gcc, X11R5 and SunView;
both monochrome and color displays.
If your problem turns out to be specific to some other hardware or
software configuration, it may take longer to track down, since we
will have to rely on other users to help.
******** Things you can do to help ********
There are some projects that users could do that are somewhat
decoupled from the main body of the code, and that would help improve
- Ghostscript needs some good, free, Type 1 (outline) fonts.
Karl Berry is working on this, but it might go faster if he got some
knowledgeable assistance. Contact karl@cs.umb.edu if you want to
- Several people have asked for a program that will take
PostScript code and reconstruct some reasonable ASCII form of the
input, if this is possible. Ghostscript's -dASCIIOUT switch does a
fair job of extracting the strings and their placement on the page,
but that's only the easy half of the job: a second pass is needed to
figure out, at a minimum, where paragraph breaks are (based on Y
positioning), and where spaces go (based on X positioning). Contact
ghost@aladdin.com if you want to help by doing this.
- Adobe has donated the specification of the Display
PostScript C API to the X distribution. Implementing this API for
Ghostscript might make Ghostscript a lot more useful, since it would
then be "plug compatible" with Display PostScript in an important
way. This might not be a very big project. Contact
ghost@aladdin.com if you would like to help with this.
- On gray-scale displays, it might be worthwhile implementing
anti-aliased fonts. To do this, one would modify the renderer so
that it cached a high-resolution bitmap, and then did the
anti-aliasing as it copied the bitmap to the device. This would
allow simulating fractional-pixel positioning, which is one of the
great benefits of anti-aliased fonts. Contact ghost@aladdin.com if
this is of interest to you.
Another thing we need a volunteer to help with is maintaining the
SunView driver. Since nearly all SunView sites have switched to
OpenWindows or plain X Windows, we (Aladdin Enterprises) plan to stop
updating it sometime fairly soon. Please contact ghost@aladdin.com
if you are willing to help with this.
******** Authors ********
Ghostscript was originally created, and is still primarily developed
and maintained, by L. Peter Deutsch, proprietor of Aladdin
The following users (in alphabetical order) have contributed
substantially to improving Ghostscript:
Hitoshi Aida (for help with the SunView driver),
William Bader (for several drivers and bug reports),
Karl Berry and Kathy Hargreaves (for helping create the fonts
distributed with Ghostscript),
Phil Conrad (for originating the PPM utilities and the PCX and
GIF drivers, and lots of bug reports),
Michel Dagenais (for major help with the DeskJet driver),
Gershon Elber (for improvements to the BGI driver),
Mike Ferrara (for help with the LaserJet driver and HP-UX),
J Greely (for help with the PostScript-to-ASCII filter),
Paul Haeberli (for the ideas behind better color selection
and trapezoid fill algorithms),
Alfred Kayser (for the DeskJet 500C driver and beta testing),
Richard Keeney (for help with the SunView driver),
Eleftherios Koutsofios (for help with the SunView driver),
Markku Koppinen (for a better circle-to-curve algorithm),
Jim Mayer (for improving the DeskJet driver),
Richard Mlynarik (for many improvements and suggestions),
Ulrich Mueller (for the LN03 driver),
Daniel Newman (for major help with VMS),
Roque Donizete de Oliveira (for testing and debugging),
Marc Paquette (for the original PaintJet driver),
Hal Peterson (for major help with BDF fonts),
Tom Quinn (for the Canon LBP-8II driver),
Jerry Roylance (for help with statusdict),
Dave St. Clair (for the color Epson/Fujitsu driver),
Jan Sanislo (for two subtle but vital fixes),
Clemens Schrimpe (for help with accented characters),
Mike Smolenski (for the Sony drivers),
Andreas Stolcke (for help with the SunView driver),
Snoopy (for major help with Hershey fonts, and many other
Michael Sweet (for help with the high-density Epson driver),
Gregg Townsend (for the low-resolution dithering algorithm),
Christian Tschudin (for fixes to the virtual memory package,
and for the original BubbleJet driver),
Jos Vos (for the original PBM/PGM/PPM driver),
Allan Wax (for the AT&T 6300 modification to the BGI driver),
Elizabeth Zwicky (for some very challenging examples).
The following people have also helped out by beta testing, by
reporting bugs, or in other ways:
Vikas Aggarwal, Michael Almond,
Peter da Silva, Art Dederick, Paul DuBois,
Mark Friedman, Richard Foulk,
Glenn Geers, Dave Goldblatt, Dirk Grunwald,
Lars Haakedal, Adam Hammer, George Hartzell, Thomas Hiller,
Russell Lang, Anthony Lee, John Lundin Jr., Lee McLoughlin,
Stergios Marinopoulos, Herb Martin, David Maynard,
Doug McDonald, Rich Murphey,
Mark Rawling, Philippe Robert, Tomas Rokicki, Wolfgang Rupprecht,
Bill Schelter, Bakul Shah,
Erik Talvola, Tim Theisen,
Amanda Walker, Peter Wan, Carsten Wiethoff, Carl Witty,
If your name appears on the above list and I've forgotten a
particular contribution you made, or if it doesn't appear at all,
please forgive me: just remind me, and you will be properly
acknowledged in the next release.
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PostScript is a trademark of Adobe Systems, Incorporated.
projects / unix-history / blob