================================================================================ (C) 1992 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt. Type XJM11877,GEnie and hit RETURN. The system will prompt you for your information. ================================================================================ ************ Topic 9 Mon Oct 14, 1991 NEVIN-S at 10:46 EDT Sub: GhostScript: a New PostScript Clone? Discussion of GhostScript, the new PostScript clone uploaded to the file libraries. 37 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 1 Mon Oct 14, 1991 NEVIN-S at 10:47 EDT Has anyone downloaded GhostScript? Files 21225-21227 appear to be a public domain PostScript clone, like UltraScript. Is that what GhostScript is? Has anyone tried it? Does it work? Does it support Type 1 fonts, with hinting?? --Nevin ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 2 Tue Oct 15, 1991 CBARRON at 00:34 EDT NEVIN - That is what GhostScript is. A pd postscript emulator originally written for unix and related operating systems. I have not monkeyed with the files! ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 3 Tue Oct 15, 1991 A.WESTON [Alan] at 19:07 EDT Finally, Ghostscript is here for the ST. It took me most of last evening to download this monster, and a very long lunch to get it up and running. I tried printing out one of the sample postscript graphic files to my Deskjet. The results were impressive. Not real fast, but the quality is there. Fonts are a different story. I ran the font test using the Times-Roman font, and the font quality isn't that good. At 24 point size the letters had a bad case of the "jaggies". The documentation admits this is a weakness. Adobe type 1 fonts are supported via a conversion utility (which I can't get to work yet) but no hinting. -Alan ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 4 Wed Oct 16, 1991 M.EVERHART2 [MIDIMIKE] at 00:08 EDT OK - now for the uninitiated, what is so great about Postscript? ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 5 Wed Oct 16, 1991 B.ZAWALSKI1 [Bob Z] at 02:48 EDT Nevin -- Thanks for starting this topic. Seeing the absolute disinterest in TeX, I declined to start a topic for GS. I find the topic lists to be long already! :') I have been receiving some E-mail queries though, and have answered general questions that others may have about GS. First off, I have only about 30 hours experience with GS, and have no additional documentation for GS than what I've uploaded. I'm not a GS guru, and I don't know one either. I have only a 9 pin, and only use GS to allow me to read documentation that comes in *.ps files. (How splendid it must be to be able to presume that all readers can easily access a Postscript printer. :- [ ) Because GS is quite large (read expensive to download), and because several bugs/limitations are documented in the distribution, I am pasting the README.ST file to this message to give potential downloaders a better idea of what the GS distribution is about. Please note that although this README.ST i included in the v2.3 distribution, it documents v2.2. No corresponding README.ST for v2.3 was available. Please report any 'fixes' that have been made since v2.2 (and undocumented bugs - of course) to this topic and to Tim Gallivan timg@landau.ph.utexas.edu if you have an access. Please forgive the added cost of this long message: It might save some costly downloads by people with expectations that GS does not meet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GS 2.2 FOR THE ATARI ST: GHOSTSCRIPT OVERVIEW: 7/22/91 Revision 0 Ghostscript is the GNU project's postscript language interpreter. It can be used to convert postscript files into formats suitable for non-postscript printers, or to display postscript files on the screen. Here is a little info about this 'zeroth' Atari ST revision of ghostscript version 2.2. I call it the 'zeroth' revision since it is the first working GS 2.2 on the ST. I will try to number future enhancements so you can tell which version of the code you have. It was compiled with gcc 1.39 and the corresponding version of the gcc libraries. There are five device drivers included in the ghostscript 2.2 executable for the ST: the MONOCHROME screen device (thanks to Hauke Hess for this), a DeskJet driver, 9 and 24-pin Epson drivers, and a BubbleJet bj10e driver. The epson drivers in 2.2 are unreliable, and may or may not work on your particular printer. I applied a posted fix, but I am not sure it I did it correctly and have no way to test these drivers. The screen and DeskJet drivers have been reasonably tested. The Epson and BubbleJet drivers are completely UNTESTED. The code runs fine and produces an output file, but the validity of this output is completely unknown to me. I have no way of testing it. There have been many reports on the network that the Epson driver in 2.2 does not work on all Epson compatible printers (it has been changed considerably from the 2.1.1 Epson driver). Good luck! The binary distribution contains the executables, a bunch of postscript support files, some relevant docs, and the default ghostscript font. The remaining fonts and docs can be obtained from the original GS distribution (I got mine from uunet.uu.net). MINIMUM CONFIGURATION: I run ghostscript on a 4M 520ST with an 85M hard drive and a monochrome monitor, so it is hard for me to estimate a minimum hardware configuration. The executable is about 235K, so it seems possible that it could run on a 512K machine. Ghostscript does, however, allocate lots of memory dynamically, so I don't really know for sure. GS 2.2 is supposed to print large bitmap images in bands on computers with limited memory, but I have not tested this on the ST (I expect that it won't work, at least not without changing some parameters in the source and recompiling). If you are going to print to high-resolution printers, you will almost certainly need > 1 meg of ram. The default screen driver will require about 75K of free ram. You can probably get by without a hard drive, if you are willing to use only the ghostscript default font. The font files take up about 2-1/4 Meg of disk space. For graphics, the default font is fine, but text will be ugly. INSTALLATION: Ghostscript searches a default path 'f:\gs,f:\gs\ps,f:\gs\fonts' for the initialization files and the fonts. To change this, define the environment variable GS_LIB to be a COMMA separated path for ghostscript to search. If you specify file paths on the command line, you may use either '/' or '\' as a path separator. To install: 1) Copy gs22b.zoo to the desired directory (f:\gs to use the default search path). 2) Unpack the archive with 'zoo e// gs22b.zoo' If you want the gs directory to be somewhere besides f:\gs, define the environment variable GS_LIB to be a comma separated search path which contains the files in the 'ps' and 'fonts' directories. USAGE: To use ghostscript: 1) Type 'gs -rxxx file.ps' (or double click on gs.ttp) on the command line. The default device is the screen at xxx dpi. If you omit the -r option, the default resolution is 80 dpi. The -r option applies ONLY to the screen device; it is ignored by printer devices. You can specify as much resolution as you have memory for, but it may take forever to construct your image. Wait a while for the image to appear on the screen (this can be a long while for complicated files or high resolutions). You can use the cursor keys to scroll around the image. Press the key for more info on the screen driver. Type to return to the GS interpreter. Then you can type PostScript commands to your heart's content. Type 'quit' or <^D> to exit GS. 2) To get a printer device, type 'gs -sDEVICE=deskjet file.ps' for a deskjet, 'gs -sDEVICE=epson file.ps' for a 24-pin epson, 'gs -sDEVICE=epson9 file.ps' for a 9-bin epson, or 'gs -sDEVICE=bj10e file.ps' for the bubble jet printer. I defined an alias for the one that I use, i.e. "alias gsdj 'gs -sDEVICE=deskjet' " The printer output will be written in a file called 'gs_pr.XXX', where XXX is a unique number. See the docs for other ways to select a device or to see which devices are installed. 3) Send the file 'gs_pr.XXX' to the printer. Since it is a binary graphics file, I had trouble finding a file printer which would print this output properly. They always try to add carriage returns and such. So I wrote a small program to print these files, called 'pr'. Source and an executable are included. Usage is 'pr file1 [file2] ...'. '^c' kills the print. Pr was intended for a DeskJet, and may not work properly on some Epsons, although it seems to work fine on some. BUGS, LIMITATIONS and POSSIBLE PROBLEMS: What works (most of the time): ------------------------------ The interpreter, DeskJet driver, and monochrome screen driver have been tested on about 9 or 10 postscript source files, which is not very extensive. A file called 'porsche.ps' is known to crash GS, but the cause has not yet been determined. Screen resolutions below 40dpi cause GS to crash, so I don't allow it. I don't know why it crashes yet. There is really no reason to use resolutions this low anyway. What might work: ---------------- The Epson and BubbleJet drivers have not been tested at all. Good Luck! What probably won't work: ------------------------- GS has code in it that apparently prints bitmaps in bands if you don't have enough memory, but I don't know if that works on the ST (I doubt it does). What definitely won't work: --------------------------- I tried to add a command line option '-p', which sends GS output directly to the printer port using fopen("PRN:","wb"). The redirection works fine, except that no matter what I do, the data is not interpreted as 'binary' and so it gets garbled in the process. The '-p' option is available, but it doesn't work. Color monitor support is partially implemented, but it doesn't work either. GS will recoginze low and medium resolutions, but it prints garbage (very slowly) to the screen--maybe another day. TIPS: Here are a few miscellaneous tips. 1) Read the supplied documentation! There isn't much, but it is helpful and it is quicker than sending me questions. 2) You can change the ghostscript prompt by editing the gs_init.ps file. Search the file for GS or >, and then change this to whatever you want the prompt to be. 3) There is a unix newsgroup called gnu.ghostscript.bug, which you may want to have a look at--also comp.languages.postscript. 4) The ps directory contains some files on which to test ghostscript. These are some of the files that where used to test the port. Don't run escher.ps at 300 dpi unless you have lots of time to waste. 5) GS can be used to view or print the output of dvips. The combination of TeX, dvips, and GS can be used to preview TeX documents (or PS output from word processors) on the screen at high resolution (if you need this sort of thing and have the memory). I have gone up to 300dpi, but scrolling gets a little slow at that resolution. FOR MORE INFO: The original source files, docs, and fonts can be obtained from many places. I obtained the ones I used from 'uunet.uu.net'. Send bug reports to: After 8/25/91 Tim Gallivan Center for Relativity University of Texas Austin, TX timg@landau.ph.utexas.edu ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 6 Fri Oct 18, 1991 DANTECH [Katie / PSRT] at 15:33 EDT MidiMike, I could answer that in page after page! VERY briefly, PostScript is one of the most powerful computer languages ever to come down the pike. It also just happens to be a knock-out page description language. To describe a page, you can go two ways. One is to record each and every pixel. Of course, if you want to go from 300 dpi to 600 dpi, or vise versa, you'll have some probs. And a single straight line on the page is going to take a WHOPPING big file, because each one of those *empty* points is going to have to be described also. Ever notice how big graphics files are? And, of course, if you want to rotate the picture, or elongate it along one axis, or scale it, or anything else, you'll need a whole new file, just as big. PostScript works on a different system. Using a coordinate system of reference for points on a page, it will go to a given point and work BY VECTORS. Go in such & so a direction from that point, for this & thus relative distance, drawing a line that is x wide. You can draw complex (I mean *complex!*) curves by stating a start point, and end point, and "influence" points to pull the line into the curve. You can clip or fill, scale, rotate, translate, wrap words around like letters on a flag in the breeze. (We've got one file that imitates exactly that effect, btw.) I'll state flatly: any effect you could achieve with a pen on paper, PostScript can duplicate. You should see how well you can do signatures, for instance. This makes PostScript super-powerful. The files are WAY smaller, by an order of magnitude. You can do it *once*, then vary parameters to scale or what- have-you. 300 dpi, 600 dpi, 1200 dpi -- SAME file works, just with better resolution at each level. Best of all, it's machine independent. ANY computer can run a PostScript printer, and PostScript *itself* works the same on all platforms. The various drawing programs are machine dependent for the SCREEN display, but NOT for what comes out of the printer. Don, my boss sysop on PSRT, uses mainly a IIe and also has a Mac. (He prefers the IIe.) I'm on an IBM. We pass files back and forth ALL the time. The PSRT is devoted to the PostScript Language. Our sysop, Don Lancaster, is the Guru from Computer Shopper, and an expert on PostScript who's been around since being one of the beta testers on the very FIRST Apple LaserWriter. He's got an article in our library, titled WHY I LIKE POSTSCRIPT. It's file #339. You really should read that, and I hope I've whetted you interest enough that you'll do so. The PSRT is on p835, and just like the Atari RT, it's a GEnie Value service. Katie / PSRT ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 7 Sat Nov 02, 1991 S.SCHAPER [Meneldil] at 17:52 EST How compatible is GhostScript with Post Script? Are the font formats the same or different. Etc. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 8 Mon Nov 04, 1991 G.BENNETT10 at 23:58 EST It is TYPE 1 compatible! Seems that there are no easy ways to convert Adobe fonts, though. However, it CAN print Mac/PC docs with Type 1 fonts. such as EPS files. So, in that sense it's better than UltraScript. It works quite well, as long as you don't mind the weird UNIX-style interface (if you can call it that). ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 9 Tue Nov 05, 1991 CHERRY.FONTS at 07:18 EST Umm.. That was a rather confusing message, Graeme. You said it *is* Type-1 compatible but there's no easy way to convert Adobe fonts. Adobe fonts *are* type-1. What am I missing? Then you said "However, it CAN print MAC/PC docs with Type-1 fonts. such as EPS files." That's a confusing statement to say the least! This leaves me wondering if you made a typo in there somewhere that caused some of the contradiction. ..Todd (tiring minds want to know!) ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 10 Thu Nov 07, 1991 A.WESTON [Alan] at 08:27 EST The ghostscript docs list a command to convert adobe type 1 fonts to Ghostscript format. I can't remember the name of the command, but I did try it and it didn't work. Has anyone gotten this to work? If so, how? For those asking about Adobe type 1 compatability, Ghostscript will not work directly with Adobe type 1 fonts. You must convert them first. And hinting is not supported. If I can make the conversion work properly I will post what the results are like. From what I hae seen so far, graphics output to my DeskJet are quite good. I have only tested several of the included fonts so far, and the text output isn't so hot. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 11 Mon Nov 11, 1991 J.FURUKAWA [SHMOGI] at 03:50 EST You think anybody out there would be nice and write a GEM front end for GhostScript? End of line. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 12 Mon Nov 11, 1991 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 20:01 EST I doubt it. If are serious about PostScript Output, buy something that does it like UltraScript ST or wait for someone to import the new CompoScript Interpreter. -- John ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 13 Mon Nov 11, 1991 A.WESTON [Alan] at 23:29 EST Ghostscript emulates Postscript, which is an interpreted language. A GEM front end is not really possible. It would be like having a GEM front end for BASIC. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 14 Tue Nov 12, 1991 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 01:49 EST I think he mean't something like UltraScript ST where is allows you to feed files to UltraScript using a GEM interface.. -- John ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 15 Tue Nov 12, 1991 CHERRY.FONTS at 02:10 EST Alan, a GEM frontend is plausable and a good idea. In effect, a GEM frontend would do the same job as something like ArcShell. Or even the Gem Desktop for that matter. Being an interpreted language doesn't mean it can't use GEM. Take a look at Ultrascript, it uses a built-in GEM front end. If one wanted the GEM shell to handle "executive mode", it would certainly be trickier but not impossible by any means. ..Todd ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 16 Tue Nov 12, 1991 W.PARKS3 [Dr. Bob] at 19:45 EST When I read that message, the first idea that came into my head was to bring up Charles's name and suggest that he simply rework Arcshell to do it. ...but I wanted to try to be a little less flippant, so I didn't. (there. it's your fault I'm being flippant today;-) Actually, I have Hisoft's Basic. And it is a "gem" program (at least from what I understand people mean when they say "gem program") It's editor makes excellent use of the menu bar and the text is stored in a window with scroll bars and all that 'gem' like stuff. So.... "like putting a GEM frontend onto Basic" doesn't really sound like to bad an idea to me... it sounds like a rather good idea, no? Bye: Dr. Bob ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 17 Tue Nov 12, 1991 C.F.JOHNSON [CodeHead] at 20:49 EST Is this program worth the time to download and mess around trying to get it to work? Is the output comparable to Postscript? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I had the impression it wasn't... - Charles ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 18 Wed Nov 13, 1991 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 00:32 EST In a previous message, C.F.JOHNSON [CodeHead] writes: | Is the output comparable to Postscript? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I had |the impression it wasn't... | |- Charles The only thing I know is that it doesn't support hinting.. I thought that hinting was fairly important in printed output. But, then again.. DTP expert I am not! ;-) -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 19 Wed Nov 13, 1991 D.BECKEMEYER [David @ BDT] at 00:49 EST Charles, Ghostscript is a postscript interpreter, so it IS postscript. I haven't tried the Atari port (yet), but I've used the Sun version (and I'd expect that it would be about the same in terms of output quality). The quality is as good as any other postscript interpreter for most things, EXCEPT FONTS. I don't understand all the reasons why, but Ghostscript rendering of fonts doesn't look very good (to me). I think it has to do with the "hinting" in the Adobe Postscript fonts, which Ghostscript doesn't support. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 20 Wed Nov 13, 1991 CHERRY.FONTS at 09:21 EST Now we're talking about what REALLY separates HE-MAN Postscript language interpreters from the 97 pound weaklings. Ultrascript handles hinting but only in its own proprietary font format, not Type-1 format and its dozen or so varieties of hinting, which is the standard. If you want to use commonly available fonts in Ultrascript, you have to use Type-3 and there you are without hinting again. At least Ghostscript makes a feable attempt at supporting type-1 fonts by supplying a "converter". Albeit one that clobbers the hints. Neither method is acceptable in MHO. ..Todd ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 22 Fri Nov 15, 1991 R.SNYDER6 [RSNYDER] at 03:27 EST I could use a hand. I've been fooling around with GhostScript, and it work on some files, (files that I guess are only graphics) but on other files I get an FONTMAP not found message. The programs' correct, there is no FONTMAP file. Would someone tell me which of the original compressed files FONTMAP is in? These files take long enough to download without having to download them all again. Thanks. --Roger ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 23 Fri Nov 15, 1991 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 21:27 EST *WARNING*: John is going into 'guess' mode.. So, don't believe what I say.. I would imagine that the FONTMAP is probably referring to the fact that whatever font your PostScript file is referring to isn't available in GhostScript and it isn't mapped to a GhostScript font. I could be wrong, but that would be my guess. BTW.. Interesting info: You can't copyright a font, but you can copyright the name of the font. This is the reason that you see the same font under different names from different people. -- John ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 24 Fri Nov 15, 1991 FB [ST Librarian] at 22:03 EST R.Snyder, I had the same trouble when I was checking the file. Make sure you check your archive for files without an extention by extracting with just * instead of *.*. I did a straight -extract filename.zoo on the command line of ZOO and it got all the files correctly. I had used *.* after the filename.zoo and I didn't all the files! Fred Beckman ST File Librarian ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 25 Sat Nov 16, 1991 R.SENNEMA [Rudy] at 00:20 EST R.SNYDER6 I referred to a listing of the contents of the GS package that I downloaded some time ago and it said FONTNAME is in the GS23B.ZOO file as fonts/fontmap and is 10,697 bytes uncompressed. Is that what you were after? ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 26 Sat Nov 16, 1991 CHERRY.FONTS at 03:57 EST John, to nitpick: you don't COPYRIGHT a font name, they are simply TRADEMARKS. A slightly different form of protection. But like you said, that's the reason AGFA/CompuGraphic call their version of Helvetica(tm) Triumvirate(tm). This way they don't have to pay royalties to Linotype Corp. The font DESIGN itself is not protected, just the name. Font DESIGNS are copyrightable in Germany and France but nowhere else are they recognised as "original works of authorship". Sad but true. ..Todd ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 27 Sat Nov 16, 1991 M.JONES52 [Jonesy] at 08:16 EST Todd, Not just sad, bass-ackwards, seems to me. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 28 Sun Nov 17, 1991 J.FURUKAWA [SHMOGI] at 06:45 EST Uh... exactly what Todd said. I was trying to use GS and though to myself, "Where have I seen THIS before?", meaning the ARC.TTP's. End of line. ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 29 Mon Nov 18, 1991 R.SNYDER6 [RSNYDER] at 02:08 EST Thanks everybody for the help. I guess I didn't get all of the files out of the archive that I was supposed to. Unfortunately, because the GS worked on the first files I tried, and the archives were taking up room I needed quickely, I deleted the archives before checking out the program more completely. When I want to fool around with GS some more I'll have to download the file again. (Must be time to buy another SyQuest cart.) --Roger ------------ Category 5, Topic 9 Message 30 Tue Nov 19, 1991 DANTECH [Katie / PSRT] at 16:47 EST We have the IBM version of GhostScript in the PSRT libraries, but we think it's best used as a PostScript "previewer", since Display PostScript is not yet standard. (Except on the NeXT.) For the best results, there's still no equal to the genuine PostScript, imho. I don't stop by this RT that often, as I don't have an Atari. But to work with raw PostScript, all you need is a word processor and a PostScript laser printer. Stop by the PSRT (p835) sometime and check some of our files. Katie / PSRT ------------