Ghostscript setup

Fontmap and Fontmap. GS or the appropriate Fontmap. Fonts, for rendering text. These are platform-independent, but if you already have fonts of the right kind on your platform, you may be able to use those. Also see the documentation on fonts. Installing Ghostscript on Unix Ghostscript uses the common configure, build and install method common to many modern software packages. A list of similar configuration options is available via.

Fonts The makefile installs all the files except fonts under the directory defined in the makefile as prefix.

Ghostscript as a shared object If you've built Ghostscript as a shared object, instead of ' make install ', you must use ' make soinstall '. Installing Ghostscript on MS Windows We usually distribute Ghostscript releases for Windows as a binary installer, for the convenience of most users.

Windows 3. Windows XP x64 edition, or Vista bit The x64 installer is normally named gs w Installing To install Ghostscript on Windows, you should run the installer executable. General Windows configuration The installer includes files in these subdirectories: gs.

EXE Ghostscript as a bit Windows command line program. This is usually the preferred executable. DLL bit dynamic link library containing most of Ghostscript's functionality For the bit Windows install, also in the gs. DLL bit dynamic link library containing most of Ghostscript's functionality For printer devices, the default output is the default printer.

DLL in the following order: In the same directory as the Ghostscript executable. Using the standard Windows library search method: the directory from which the application loaded, the current directory, the Windows system directory, the Windows directory and the directories listed in the PATH environment variable.

To do so, you should generate a NOTE: non-standard! The resulting output will be compliant with the spec unlike the input. Ghostscript currently doesn't do a very good job of deleting temporary files if it exits because of an error; you may have to delete them manually from time to time. The original PostScript language specification, while not stating a specific word sise, defines 'typical' limits which make it clear that it was intended to run as a bit environment.

Ghostscript was originally coded that way, and the heritage remains within the code base. This is the only real purpose in adding support for large integers, however since that time, we have made some efforts to allow for the use of bit words; in particular the use of integers, but also lifting the 64K limit on strings and arrays, among other areas.

Even when the build supports bit words, you should be aware that there are areas of Ghostscript which do not support bit values. Sometimes these are dependent on the build and other times they are inherent in the architecture of Ghostscript the graphics library does not support bit co-ordinates in device space for example, and most likely never will. Note that the extended support for bit word size can be disabled by executing 'true. The Ghostscript distribution includes some Unix shell scripts to use with Ghostscript in different environments.

These are all user-contributed code, so if you have questions, please contact the user identified in the file, not Artifex Software. For instance,. If the "directory" name ends with a closing square bracket " ] ", it is taken to refer to a real directory, for instance.

To preserve the case of switches, quote them like this:. If you are using on an X Windows display, you can set it up with the node name and network transport, for instance. When passing options to ghostcript through a batch file wrapper such as ps2pdf. For example:. There is also an older version for MS Windows called just gswin32 that provides its own window for the interactive postscript prompt.

For printer devices, the default output is the default printer. This can be modified as follows. Invoking Ghostscript from the command prompt in Windows is supported by the Windows executable described above. In addition to the device parameters recognized by all devices , Ghostscript's X driver provides parameters to adjust its performance.

Users will rarely need to modify these. Note that these are parameters to be set with the -d switch in the command line e. Xdefaults file. Because of bugs in the SCO Unix kernel, Ghostscript will not work if you select direct screen output and also allow it to write messages on the console.

If you are using direct screen output, redirect Ghostscript's terminal output to a file. Because Ghostscript must initialize the PostScript environment before executing the commands specified by this option it should be specified after other setup options. Specifically this option 'bind's all operations and sets the systemdict to readonly.

Note that by "library files" here we mean all the files identified using the search rule under " How Ghostscript finds files " above: Ghostscript's own initialization files, fonts, and files named on the command line. However, device parameters set this way PageSize , Margins , etc.

As noted above, -d and -s define initial values for PostScript names. Some of these names are parameters that control the interpreter or the graphics engine.

Otherwise, images are rendered using the nearest neighbour scaling Bresenham's line algorithm through the image, plotting the closest texture coord at each pixel. When downscaling this results in some source pixels not appearing at all in the destination.

When upscaling, each source pixels will cover at least one destination pixel. This allows for a performance vs. Every source pixel will contribute partially to the destination pixels. Computationally, image interpolation is much more demanding than without interpolation lots of floating point muliplies and adds for every output pixel vs simple integer additions, subtractions, and shifts. In all but special cases image interpolation uses a Mitchell filter function to scale the contributions for each output pixel.

When upscaling, every output pixel ends up being the weighted sum of 16 input pixels, When downscaling more source pixels will contribute to the interpolated pixels. Every source pixel has some effect on the output pixels. Note that because of the way antialiasing blends the edges of shapes into the background when they are drawn some files that rely on joining separate filled polygons together to cover an area may not render as expected with GraphicsAlphaBits at 2 or 4.

Further note; because this feature relies upon rendering the input it is incompatible, and will generate an error on attempted use, with any of the vector output devices.

PCL andPostScript cannot be handled in ths way, and so all the pages must be interpreted. Also, in this case, the font returned by findfont is the actual font named fontname , not a copy of the font with its FontName changed to the requested one. The font specified fontname will be embedded instead, limiting all future users of the document to the same approximate rendering.

The value is platform dependent. It must end with a directory separator. Adobe specifies GenericResourceDir to be an absolute path to a single resource directory. Ghostscript instead maintains multiple resource directories and uses an extended method for finding resources, which is explained in "Finding PostScript Level 2 resources".

Due to the extended search method, Ghostscript uses GenericResourceDir only as a default directory for resources being not installed. Therefore GenericResourceDir may be considered as a place where new resources to be installed. The default implementation of the function ResourceFileName uses GenericResourceDir when 1 it is an absolute path, or 2 the resource file is absent.

The extended search method does not call ResourceFileName. Pages can be printed in reverse or normal order, or selected pages, including all even or all odd, and multiple collated copies can be produced.

Since pages are saved until the flush command, pages can be printed multiple times, in any order. Because its possible as of PDF 2. Instead this option takes a string, which is first compared against the OutputConditionIdentifier in each OutputIntent in the array.

If the OutputConditionIdentifier is not a standard identifier then it should be Custom and the UseOutputIntent string will be matched against the value of the Info key instead.

If the current directory is the first path a test is made for the iccprofiles directory. Next, the remaining paths with the string Resource in it are tested. The prefix up to the path separator character preceding the string Resource, concatenated with the string iccprofiles is used and if this exists, then this path will be used for ICCProfilesDir.

Example usage is: gs This mode should be used with caution, and. Enables access controls on files. Access controls fall into three categories, files from which Ghostscript is permitted to read, ones to which it is permitted to write, and ones over which it has "control" i. These access controls apply to all files accessed via Ghostscript's internal interface to the C library file handling.

Whilst we have taken considerable pains to ensure that all the code we maintain as well as the so called "contrib" devices, that are devices included in our release packages, but not strictly maintained by the Ghostscript development team uses this interface, we have no control over thirdparty code. It relied on restricting the function of setpagedevice to avoid the device code from being manipulated into opening arbitrary files.

The application of the file permissions was done within the internal context of the Postscript interpreter, and some other aspects of the Postscript restrictions were applied in the Postscript environment. With so many of the feature's capabilities relying on the Postscript context and environment, by using other Ghostscript specific features maliciously, the restrictions could be overridden. Whilst the path storage and application of the permissions is implemented entirely in C, it is still possible for Postscript to add and remove paths from the permissions lists see.

An incompatibility exists between the pre Previously, it was possible to do the equivalent of: save. This is no longer the case. After the call to. As the 9. Path matching is simple: it is case sensitive, and we do not implement full featured "globbing" or regular expression matching such complexity would significantly and negatively impact performance. This is a change in behaviour compared to the old code which, on Windows, was case in sensitive.

This is in recognition of changes in Windows behaviour, in that it now supports although does not enforce case sensitivity. Similarly, paths read during initialisation from Fontmap , cidfmap , and the platform specific font file enumeration e. It is included for now in case any users find a case where the 9.

It means such users can keep working until we have assessed the issue, and distributed a solution. This mode also sets the. Ghostscript attempts to find an optimum balance between speed and memory consumption, but there are some cases in which you may get a very large speedup by telling Ghostscript to use more memory. Please note that this discussion relates to devices which produce a bitmap format as the output.

These parameters have no effect on the vector devices, such as pdfwrite. All devices may use a display list "clist" and use banding when rendering PDF 1. This prevents allocation of excessively large amounts of memory for the transparency buffer stack. The number of threads should generally be set to the number of available processor cores for best throughput. This can also be useful in processing large documents when using a high-level vector output device like pdfwrite that maintains significant internal state.

In fact, the. For pattern tiles that are very large, Ghostscript uses an internal display list memory based clist , but this can slow things down. The current default threshold is 8Mb -- pattern tiles larger than this will be cached as clist rather than bitmap tiles. There are several debugging switches that are detected by the interpreter. These switches are available whether or not Ghostscript was built with the DEBUG macro defined to the compiler refer to building a debugging configuration.

Previous to 8. Now there are several debugging flags to allow more selective debugging information to be printed containing only what is needed to investigate particular areas.

The -Z and -T switches apply only if the interpreter was built for a debugging configuration. In the table below, the first column is a debugging switch, the second is an equivalent switch if any and the third is its usage. The following switch affects what is printed, but does not select specific items for printing:. All the short form flags for -Z have an equivalent long form. Future flags may be added with a long form only due to all the short form flags being used already.

Visual Trace allows to view internal Ghostscript data in a graphical form while execution of C code. Special instructions to be inserted into C code for generating the output.

Client application rasterizes it into a window. Currently the rasterization is implemented for Windows only, in clients gswin There are two important incompletenesses of the implementation :. The graphical output uses a hardcoded scale.

An advanced client would provide a scale option via user interface. Breaks are not implemented in the client. If you need a step-by-step view, you should use an interactive C debugger to delay execution at breakpoints. The table here lists them by name and size.

A guide to international paper sizes can be found at. In this environment, the relevant section of the resource file should look like this:. Please ignore issues about UFST if you haven't got it. Important note: Third-party font renderers may be incompatible with devices that can embed fonts in their output such as pdfwrite , because such renderers may store fonts in a form from which Ghostscript cannot get the necessary information for embedding, for example, the Microtype fonts supplied with the UFST.

Ghostscript can be configured to disable such renderers when such a device is being used. As of Ghostscript version 9. NOTE: With version 9.

Both bridges may run together. There are 2 ways to handle fonts with a third-party font renderer FAPI. Ghostscript searches the specified file names as explained in How Ghostscript finds files. Default values for these arguments are equal to argument names. Font files, which are being handled with FAPI, may reside in any directory in your hard disk. Paths to them to be specified in FAPIfontmap and with special command line arguments, explained below. The path may be either absolute or relative.

Relative ones are being resolved from the path, which is specified in FAPIconfig file. It may include records of 2 types : general records and FCO records see below. A general record describes a font, which is being rendered with FAPI.

They must end with semicolon. Each general record is a pair. The first element of the pair is the font name the name that PostScript documents use to access the font, which may differ from real name of the font which the font file defines. The second element is a dictionary with entries :.

Each record of a group occupy a single line, and contains a number and 1, 2 or 3 names. The number is the font index in the FCO file, the first name is the Postscript font name, the secong is an Encoding resource name, and the third is a decoding resource name.

CID fonts to be listed in another map file. The format is similar to FAPIfontmap , but dictionaries must contain few different entries :. The last ones defines the configuration for handling resident UFST fonts only. Follow instructions in it. If UFST needs it and the command line argument is not specified, Ghostscript prints a warning and searches plugin file in the current directory. Some configurations of UFST need a path for finding symbol set files.

If UFST needs it and the command line argument is not specified, Ghostscript prints a warning and searches symbol set files in the current directory.

Note that UFST and Free Type cannot handle some Ghostscript fonts because they do not include a PostScript interpreter and therefore have stronger restrictions on font formats than Ghostscript itself does - in particular, Type 3 fonts. Contact Us. Invoking Ghostscript This document describes how to use the command line Ghostscript client. Here are some basic examples. The details of how these work are described below. Help at the command line: gs -h You can get a brief help message by invoking Ghostscript with the -h or -?

The message shows for that version of the Ghostscript executable: the version and release information the general format of the command line a few of the most useful options the formats it can interpret the available output devices the search path the bug report address On other systems the executable may have a different name: System Invocation Name Unix gs VMS gs MS Windows 95 and later gswin You can set the output device and process a file from the interactive prompt as well: epson selectdevice myfile.

You can switch devices at any time by using the selectdevice procedure, for instance like one of these: x11alpha selectdevice epson selectdevice Output resolution Some printers can print at several different resolutions, letting you balance resolution against printing speed.

Output to files Ghostscript also allows you to control where it sends its output. For instance, to convert somefile. Sometimes the initialization files are compiled into Ghostscript and cannot be changed. Interacting with pipes As noted above, input files are normally specified on the command line. This option is also set by the -dFitPage option.

If neither of these is specified, the output will use the screen options for any output device that doesn't have an OutputFile parameter, and the printer options for devices that do have this parameter. This may include any extra bleed area needed to accommodate the physical limitations of cutting, folding, and trimming equipment. The actual printed page may include printing marks that fall outside the bleed box.

The trim box defines the intended dimensions of the finished page after trimming. Some files have a TrimBox that is smaller than the MediaBox and may include white space, registration or cutting marks outside the CropBox. Using this option simulates appearance of the finished printed page. The art box defines the extent of the page's meaningful content including potential white space as intended by the page's creator. The art box is likely to be the smallest box. It can be useful when one wants to crop the page as much as possible without losing the content.

Unlike the other "page boundary" boxes, CropBox does not have a defined meaning, it simply provides a rectangle to which the page contents will be clipped cropped. By convention, it is often, but not exclusively, used to aid the positioning of content on the usually larger, in these cases media. For files created with encryption method 4 or earlier, the password is an arbitrary string of bytes; with encryption method 5 or later, it should be text in either UTF-8 or your locale's character set Ghostscript tries both.

Annotations are shown by default. By default, AcroForm is not enumerated because Adobe Acrobat doesn't do this. This option may be useful for debugging or recovery of incorrect PDF files that don't associate all annotations with the page objects. This may be useful for backward compatibility with old versions of Ghostscript and Adobe Acrobat, or for processing files with large values of UserUnit that otherwise exceed implementation limits.

On TrueType fonts, this is often a hollow sqaure. Ghostscript now attempts to mimic this undocumented feature using a user parameter RenderTTNotdef. Pages of all documents in PDF collections are numbered sequentionally. A list can include single pages or ranges of pages. Ranges of pages use the minus sign '-', individual pages and ranges of pages are separated by commas ','.

A trailing minus '-' means process all remaining pages. Note: The differences in appearance of files with overprinting and spot colors caused by the differences in the color model of the output device are part of the PostScript and PDF specifications.

They are not due to a limitation in the implementation of Ghostscript or its output devices. In Adobe Acrobat, viewing of the effects of overprinting is enabled by the 'Overprint Preview' item in the 'Advanced' menu.

This feature is not available in the free Acrobat Reader. The free Acrobat Reader also uses the tint transform functions to convert spot colors to the appropriate alternate color space. Testing a file name for an absolute path System Does the name VMS Contain a node, device, or root specification? Finding PostScript Level 2 resources Adobe specifies that resources are installed in a single directory.

It concatenates : The value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir ; The name of the resource category for instance, CMap ; The name of the resource instance for instance, Identity-H. In this case it concatenates : A directory listed in the section How Ghostscript finds files , except the current directory; The value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir ; The name of the resource category for instance, CMap ; The name of the resource instance for instance, Identity-H Due to possible variety of the part 1, the first successful combination is used.

Font lookup Ghostscript has a slightly different way to find the file containing a font with a given name. First, it looks up the font name in the combined Fontmaps. If this process fails at any step, Ghostscript looks for a file whose name is the concatenation of the value of the FontResourceDir system parameter and the font name, with no extension. If such a file exists, can be loaded, and defines a font of the desired name, that again is the end. If that fails, Ghostscript then looks for a file on the general search path whose name is the desired font name, with no extension.

It goes to the first directory on the list, and it's descendants, looking for all files that appear to contain PostScript fonts also Truetype fonts ; it then adds all those files and fonts to the combined Fontmaps, and starts over. Finally, if all else fails, it will try to find a substitute for the font from among the standard 35 fonts. Font-name-to-file-name mapping given in Fontmap files; aliases are possible, and there need not be any relation between the font name in the Fontmap and the FontName in the file.

Font-name-to-file-name mapping is implicit — the FontName in the file is used. Aliases are not possible. Only fonts and files named in Fontmap are used.

Every Type 1 font file in each directory is available; if TrueType fonts are supported the ttfont. The v and f options cause verbose output and indicate that what follows is a filename of the archive. On some systems you can become root by running su and then supplying root's password. On others, you might run sudo make install in which case you supply your own password if you have privileges to run sudo.

We're going to assume that you have no interest in compiling on Windows, or that if you did you would not need instructions for the process. If you go farther down the page, past the archived files, past the checksums, you will find links for bit and bit Windows versions.

Simply download one of these and run it to install Ghostscript. If you do this before you install Scribus, chances are Scribus will find Ghostscript unless you choose a nonstandard location when Ghostscript was installed.

Remember to choose the gswin32c. If you don't know about Brew or MacPorts you should install Ghostscript by donwloading a. At the time of writing the current version is Ghostscript 9. From Scribus Wiki. Categories : Installation Tools EN. Navigation menu Personal tools Log in.