Ghostscript 8 released!

[whoosh777]

A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today!

Visit http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/atlast.html,

you can download or view the manual online from there.

Ghostscript is a program for viewing + printing + converting
PS + PDF, this release version includes a rejuvenated
Turboprint printing option, so you can print PS and PDF in
24 bit colour via turboprint.

The emphasis of Ghostscript is on printing rather than viewing,
but I have done a lot of work on the viewers which I wrote completely
from scratch, ie they are brand new.

This is an optimised FPU noixemul 68020 compile,
I will make available in the next few days a no-FPU version.

One of the advantages of Ghostscript is that it keeps current
with regards to PS + PDF versions, so this port understands
Postscript levels 1,2,3. Earlier Ghostscripts such as 6.50 and
5.10 only reach level 2.

There are 6 viewing options for graphics cards (Cybergraphics,
Picasso), which include option to view PS and PDF
on a 24 bit rgb colour WB window. Also available is the option to
view in 24 bit colour on a custom screen window, this has the
advantage of allowing lower resolutions which speeds up the
viewer graphics features.

:For extra speed you can use the 256 shades of gray viewer on
a cyber depth 8 screen, this should be twice as fast as a 16 bit
screen viewer.

Also there are 6 viewing options for AGA, the highest quality
image is from the HAM8 custom screen viewer. You can also view
PS and PDF in colour on a WB window, the colour allocation is
via the OS so its acceptable but imperfect. For high quality
colour on AGA use the HAM8 viewer for 262144 colour viewing.

Printing can also be done via AmigaOS printer in 12 bit 4096 colour,
as well as in shades of gray and 1 bit b/w.

PS + PDF docs can also be converted by Ghostscript to many formats including
jpeg, png, bmp, various fax formats, etc

:eg You can convert a PS page into jpeg for inclusion in a web page,

As you know a lot of info on the internet is available only in PS and PDF
formats, Ghostscript enables you to view or print these in full quality.

For an ascii art picture summary of what Ghostscript does use the following URL:

http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/webmanual.html#introduction

The Cyber viewers have been tested on 4 cards and in depth on 2 cards
so they may fail on some graphics cards, if so email me and I will
attempt to fix things.

I am interested also in feedback on how the viewers function on
Pegasos and A1.


One other thing: Ghostscript 8 is completely free of charge!
(download it via the links in the html manual mentioned earlier)

[whoosh777]

by Billsey on 2003/7/18 16:08:00

>You must mean the Amiga version, since I've been using the Mac version for
>quite some time.

yes!

Ghostscript 8.00 is officially dated as 21 Nov 2002,

as usual Apple, PC, Unix, Linux are always there,

I found no mention of Amiga, and I think no other platforms either,
my work is based on reworking the Unix-gcc source code, creating
from scratch the AmigaOS printer + viewer options (AGA + Cyber)
and a major fixing of the Turboprint source codes
which a lot of people request.

I created the pre-release in February out of necessity:
I had bought a very cheap lazer printer fully unsupported on
AmigaOS, so I had a choice:

return lazer printer for refund OR recompile Ghostscript to include the driver
for my printer Samsung ML-4500, I chose the latter path.

The c-driver I downloaded from a Suse Linux site, it had major bugs,
I successfully debugged it in 1-2 weeks, I also managed a whole series
of things which one of the top Suse Linux printer site people
claimed was not possible, eg he said he failed to change the
driver name from gdi, I did this in about 1/2 an hour its there now
as samsung_gdi, the website claimed that this driver could only be
used in Suse Linux 8 upwards and only on Ghostscript 6 upwards yet
I managed to hack it into Ghostscript 510 on the Amiga,

I emailed this Suse Linux guy and he never even bothered to reply!

The problem with Linux is everything is automated for them they just
click and things happen automatically, when there is a real problem
they are quite clueless as I discovered from the above experience,
the impenetrability of Linux doesnt help either,
Linux is a real dependency-culture. On the Amiga we are used to
hacking down to quite a low level, the Amiga is such an open and
usable environment.

This Ghostscript 8 as you pointed out is for
68020 FPU compatible Amigas, the Amiga specific parts are
totally unrelated to any Mac specific parts. I know some
Mac people who wish to use the Turboprint option of the port
for printing pdf's created on macs so it may be worth looking at that.

This is credit to Florian Zeillers work on the Turboprint program,
I am not a printer person myself, I come to the project with
generic computing skills no printer expertise as such though I am
learning.

Probably the Mac community dont like Ghostscript as it gives
DTP power to the masses for free!

[whoosh777]

MichaelMerkel said:

>whoosh, please remove obsolete devices - e.g. "Turboprint, tp24x, tp16x"
>from the release.

suggestion noted, I will try to tidy up the device lists
this will make its way onto the fix.html webpage where I will
put update info. The device list can only be changed via a
full recompile, so I cannot do it immediately.

probably I will also put more info into the documentation
eg explanations of the main switches such as -dNOPAUSE, etc,

also I should really put more info explaining about using
Ghostscript for newcomers.

Currently the prelease doc file

http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/amiga_readme.RTFI

has more introductory info, however there are some legacy
things in there but its worth a read.

whoosh777

[whoosh777]

Framiga wrote:

>If you are talking about some speed improvements using GS8 from shell, yes it is.

>But using GS8 through gs-handler, i haven't noticed, great speed gain.(100% CPU use during printings on my 040@30MHZ)

>Remember that the gs5.10 that i have installed, is a 040fpu version.


I think speed improvements will only be noticed on "challenging" docs,

eg a page that takes 15 minutes to render,

the gs8 rendering algorithms have been hugely improved by A.F.P.L,

however if you are just printing tiger.eps this doesnt challenge
the program.

Regarding quality, DarkAngel posted me printouts via GS510 and via GS8,
the difference in quality was staggering, he also sent me a printout
via GS8 done on photoquality paper which was totally perfect.
Perfect colour definition, perfect image definition, totally smooth
colour (no pixels at all), sharp precise colour changes where relevant,
it was perfection.

The render algorithm of GS8 is *different* from GS510, a totally different
+ more modern render pathway and the results speak for themselves.

There are many different pathways from a PS doc to a printed page,
through GS8 and Turboprint,
the method used by GS8 optimises both the quality of the Ghostscript
render algorithms and optimises the quality of the Turboprint render
algorithms.

GS510 OTOH uses a pathway that focusses on speed rather than quality,
GS8 focusses on quality vs speed, yet is still faster according to
the feedback than GS510, this speed is thanks to more efficient
algorithms from the A.F.P.L Ghostscript people.

BTW I have noted your l:gs-handler comments, I will put this into
the docs once I know for certain what the correct steps are,
is it:

makedir gs8:l
copy gs510:l/gs-handler gs8:l

assign Ghostscript: gs8:

?

should there also be
assign l: gs8:l add

??

or is this assign not necessary?
Is there a mountlist also necessary somewhere?


One other thing, the download program is a lower memory overhead recompile
designed to run on all systems eg on a 12 meg A1200 (my one),
it uses 3 meg horizontal bands.

Now I will make available later on from the page fix.html eg a
10 meg band version, this should be quite a bit faster,

:the problem is such a compile would not run on my own or other
low memory systems.

:the main download needs to run on all systems,

Later on also 68040 and 68060 versions will be made available,
I wish to try to fix as many problems as possible on the 68020
version before doing these other versions.

Yet another thing, you have only been talking about the Turboprint
devices, note that this compile has a brand new suite of viewers not
present in GS510, there are 12 viewers in total: 6 for graphics cards
and 6 for AGA setups.

Regarding GS510 vs GS8, GS8 handles postscript levels 1,2,3
GS510 doesnt go beyond level 2, so some docs you may download wont
print through GS510.

So there are many further enhancements to the program
which you are overlooking.

whoosh777

[whoosh777]

>>Probably the Mac community dont like Ghostscript as it gives DTP power to the masses for free!
 
 
 
 
 
>No doubt! I've found that on Mac FTP sites there are programs requiring
>shareware fees-programs that are little more than "Hello World".
 
>If I had the capability, I'd be strongly tempted to write a highly complex,
>can't-live-without-it, feature packed program and throw it up on Info-Mac
>for free just to piss off the greedy, erm, ones.

!

Of the major platforms the only one I really respect is Unix, a lot of
major computer science theory came from the Unix community, ie from
Unix users. University computer theoreticians tend to be Unix people
although these days maybe Linux is displacing Unix.

Note that the C language itself was invented by Dennis Ritchie
for the purpose of porting unix!

The whole of Unix both the operating system and all the programs are all
done in C. (today probably C++ as well)

Linux are just imitators, the originators are Unix.

Mac at worst are greedy, but M$ I think are really cynical,
I believe M$'s strategy is that the moment a Windows version has
saturated the market they then release an incompatible new version.
This keeps all the big players perpetually on the purchase treadmill.

Many months ago some russian guy hacked into M$ central and reached some
version of Windows 13? years in the future! M$ of course tried to deny this,
but it sounds believable, they probably have 4 versions lined up
beyond XP, maybe YP, ZP, ...
as soon as each one saturates the market they release the next one.

Each coming version is described as wonderful eg I remember everyone
raving about Windows 95, yet today Windows 98 is described as terrible,
In 5 years time XP will be "terrible" but ZP will be fantastic!

People have such short memories it seems,

BTW M$ will never conquer the far east, all the far eastern countries
are going for Linux, also they are into bigtime Windows piracy,

I think M$'s fiefdom is firstly USA and secondly Western Europe,
as you move eastwards Bill Gates's influence gradually fades,

[whoosh777]

Framiga said:

>@whoosh777

>This week-end, i've done some intensive testings on GS8.

I will gradually make available different compiles if you wish to
compare, note that a no-FPU version may be faster than a FPU version,
it will be worth doing a comparison.

In the next few hours I will upload the no-FPU version
of the current program.

>You were right on the higher quality respect GS5.10.
>Better rendering colors and resolution, on hi-quality images.

its the challenging docs that you see a difference, the
people behind Ghostscript have done a lot of work speeding up
and improving the algorithms.

GS510 is internally very chaotic, GS8 is really clean and neat
and organised.

Some PS pages on my machine happen quickly some take ages, the
speed I think is to do with how complex the PS code is,

Note that if you use 1 bit b/w it will be considerably faster,

>But, on my system (040@30Mhz-24Meg-OS3.9BB2 and a old Epson Stylus Color)
>GS8 is heavier than GS5.10.(obviously)

You have an intermediate amount of memory, I have 2 + 4 + 8 == 14 meg,
(50MHz 68030),
many 68060 people have 64 meg (I think), so for them higher memory overhead
versions are OK,

the release version is a low memory overhead, ie 3 meg bands,

Is your machine AGA then??

>Great works, whoosh777.
>I hope in a 040 optimized version

this will certainly happen,

I will try to iron out any probs that
people encounter with the 68020 version first,
so familiarize yourself with the 68020 version,
this way when I release the 68040 version
 you will be able to locate any problems.

If I went straight to making 68060 and 68040 versions
then I would have to keep redoing all 3 versions whenever
a problem was found. So its more efficient to gather +
respond to feedback on 68020 and then generate 68040 and 68060 versions.

I will do at least two 040 versions: no-FPU and FPU,
you could then test out which of these 2 is the fastest,
Ghostscript 8 uses some clever integer maths which could be
faster than an FPU, it depends on CPU-speed vs FPU-speed.

>and possibly an
>installer

not sure if this will happen though!

I cannot face another learning curve!

BTW if you are interested to translate the manual to Italian,
then I will make this available on the website.

make sure you try out the stuff in the english manual
before translating: this way you will translate the meaning
and not just the words,

With the pre-release according to the webstats company
 of the ISP's which have a country in their name Italy was
at the top of the country list, some 50 people or so from Italy
visited the website, so its worth translating,

The ISP's which are .com or .net one doesnt know the country,

This release has been getting a much bigger response (15 x as big)
than the pre-release so I dont know what the Country stats now are,

whoosh777

[whoosh777]

I have made the Country Webstats for this Ghostscript 8.00 release
website publicly available, a lot of food for thought,
shows there is still an Amiga market out there, despite what the
naysayers want us to think.

to avoid copyright issues its as 2 jpeg window snapshots
of IBrowse!, URL is:

http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/countrystats.html

These are the cumulative country stats,

Before I announced the release, the cumulative visitor stats
had saturated to about 300 - 400,

so the release has brought in over 1500 new people!

I have no idea how!

This means the 5 months of work and obstacles was
worth it I feel,

Anyway the numbers have gone through the roof!

But emails, not many eg just 1 email today,
and thread postings eg here not many,

figure that one out!

Strange thing is my ann.lu announce got maybe a dozen
postings, but "Bill McEwan not attending Amiwest" some 200,
with long subthread between 2 posters about "LOL"!

These numbers explain a lot of things,

[whoosh777]

I understand now!

The strangeness of the response to this Ghostscript
release puzzled me, but now I understand via analogies:

If I want to buy a book, I go into a bookshop, if I
find the book I buy it and later read it.

I dont usually contact the owner of the bookshop
about this! I also dont usually discuss the book
either with anyone.

I suppose a similar analogy is with forums,
eg I browse amiga.org and make postings but
I have never actually emailed Wayne,

I emailed one of the moderators some weeks ago
but that was because
he volunteered to test out the prog not because
he was a moderator.



whoosh777