68k AFPL Ghostscript 8.13 released

[whoosh777]

68k AFPL Ghostscript 8.13 released today.


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

Allows you to view + print + convert current PS + PDF documents
created on any platform such as PC, Mac, Linux, Unix,...

You can run it on: A1200, A4000, Amithlon, WinUAE, Morphos, OS4.

ie On anything that understands OS3.0 68020 eg it will even run on
OS3.0 A500s.

It's a noixemul version so doesnt require ixemul.library.

If you have a graphics card you get truecolour viewing,
and on AGA machines you can view in 262144 colour HAM8,

So, the minimal requirements are OS3.0 68020, and
if you further have cybergraphics.library then it will utilise this,

It has the fully functioning Turboprint devices that I
debugged for AFPL Ghostscript 8.00.

So, if you have Turboprint you can print in truecolour,

It can be run in parallel to my AFPL Ghostscript 8.00 port.  I recommend that people who have GS800 installed keep that
install in place and install GS813 in parallel.

AFPL Ghostscript 8.13 requires its own full install eg
it needs an extra assign GS813Resource: and needs more fonts than 8.00 did.

GS813 was the current version of AFPL Ghostscript when I begun in mid February.

However, one week later and it was no longer current!

So, it's almost current.

Later in the year, I may try and do a version that is current at the time of release.

Catching up with future versions will happen faster, the transition from GS8.00 to GS8.13 was the first transition I have done and I was also doing a lot of tidying up of the program.

whoosh777@blueyonder.co.uk

[whoosh777]

Probably I should say something about the
motivation of this release,

originally I arrived at Ghostscript out of
necessity,

I wanted to print out the PPC CPU's documentation,
but that was 576 pages, way beyond the
scope of my Star LC-10 dot matrix,

so I bought a b/w laser printer Samsung ML-4500
at a bargain price of £79,

it had a parallel port so I thought it must
be ok!

Unfortunately not possible to print with it,

It came with a "Linux driver", ie a Ghostscript driver,
(nothing to do with Linux actually),

the driver was hidden in rpm format so I couldnt
even access it,

surfing the web I located the same driver from a
Linux site,

Anyway I could either return the printer to the shop for
a refund and buy eg a HP laser printer for maybe £279,
or I could try and incorporate the driver into GS,


So I begun on the existing Amiga port of GS510,
I eventually compiled in my driver,
but it was severely bugged. After maybe 100 trashed
printouts of the GS example docs I fully debugged the
driver, now present in GS813 as -sDEVICE=samsung_gdi,
it now prints untrashed images,

So now I could print, then I thought: why not do
the port properly to an up to date GS. I surfed the web
and found AFPL GS8.00 to be the current version.

So I begun and produced the pre-release which
just about functioned. That was my first ever
genuine port. My GS510 effort was not a true port
but more of a recompile,

With the pre-release people told me the port was no good because:

1. no Turboprint support,
2. no Graphics card support,
3. I had used gcc2.7.?

I find that Turboprint doesnt function at all with GS8, and the
existing viewers have unfixable crashes,

5 months later on Friday 18th July 2003 the
release GS8.00 was complete with everything running smoothly,
Turboprint, Graphics cards, HAM8 for AGA, 12-bitplane AmigaOS printing,
compiled with gcc2.95.3-4,

I now knew my way around the geekgadgets concept,
I didnt even know what Geekgadgets was when
the pre-release was done.


Achieving the release GS8.00 was a major learning experience,
both from the POV of PR + people and also from the POV of programming:
GS8.00 internally is like a labyrinth and the environment is totally unhelpful,
there are over 500 source files, with dozens of authors, spanning maybe a
decade and half a dozen OSes,

If I had known GS8 would take so long I may not have
even begun.


It was some months after the release before I actually printed out the
PPC manual in its entirety, all 576 pages, perfectly rendered,
published book quality, took the best part of a day to do:

rendering at 600dpi takes some time per page on a 68030,
my printer can only hold a limited number of pages at a time,
certainly not a whole ream which these docs require,

so I had to keep replenishing the in tray and emptying the out tray,


So really its like the story of "the house that Jack built":
"this is the program that whoosh ported,...":
I wanted to read up about G3, this leads to a pdf doc,
this then requires eg a laser printer, this requires
a driver to be compiled in, driver is bugged, I debug it
but then think let me go further so I port GS8, people
complain so I port GS8 properly, it takes 5 months,
meanwhile I've forgotten about the G3 docs!


When you run GS8 it says Nov 2002 (I think), so as its
2004 already it seemed time to "freshen" the version,

I had been putting this off repeatedly but as I had
 promised somewhere on my website that I would begin
by mid February at the latest, I decided I had better
 keep my word. So I begun right at the end of my promise,
 I also wanted to tidy up what I had done so far.
Now I am much more organised so future versions will
happen much quicker:

I dont want to track each and every version because its
a bit of a treadmill, also it prevents the program
stabilising. But I will try and prevent too much
version drift!


whoosh

[djnick]

excellent! as I still use amiga for DTP, I`m interested - does your converted program have GUI [can I use old Ghostscript[reaction]GUI from Aminet to convert .ps files to .pdf]?

[whoosh777]

===================================

@djnick

excellent! as I still use amiga for DTP, I`m interested -
does your converted program have GUI [can I use old Ghostscript[reaction]GUI
from Aminet to convert .ps files to .pdf]?

===================================

ok, here come the tricky questions!

The program is very stable eg it is very crash proof and
the viewers will make maximum usage of your hardware:

truecolour for graphics cards + 262144 colour HAM8 for AGA
and other colour options as well such as grayscale,

The Turboprint device functions flawlessly no problems with
delicate and small fonts as happened with some recent GS ports,

apparently in the later GNU GS's parts of delicate fonts would
be missing via Turboprint,


the colours + image definition from inkjets is totally perfect
via Turboprint, email Peer Richter for a jpeg scan,
(his email is on the website),


:I have had positive feedback from the entire planet for the
Turboprint part of GS8: from Australia in the east to
Mexico + USA + Canada in the West, and also
north + east + west + south Europe: (Sweden, Poland, Germany, Italy),
nothing yet from outerspace!


:partly this tells me how popular Turboprint is,

so via shell usage it does everything (in some sense of the word),


Now to the GUI, there isnt an inbuilt GUI,

the viewers use the keyboard and mouse as a hardware GUI,
beyond that they use the standard OS gadgets such as resize, close etc,

eg if you resize the window the centre point remains the same,
ie its not just a dumb "smart refresh" resize,

I achieve all the power of a GUI but more directly eg you can
scroll the image by directly dragging it with the mouse,
much more direct than a GUI, you can also scroll via the arrow keys,
so why bother with GUI buttons??

IMO GUI gadgetry eats up view space,
eg with many browsers + email programs 1/2 the screen height is
eaten up by the control panel,

I want to see the image not the control panel,
I want to read my email not look at some buttons,


(I have also eg automatic scroll toggled by clicking right mouse button),


GUIs for other GS's I think arent compatible because
I think they use GS in a nonstandard way,


Michael Merkel has written his own GUI frontend via rxmui,
its on www.aminet, I dont know whether it does what you want though,
if it doesnt contact him and ask him about it, his email is under
credits on the homepage,


You can certainly convert between ps and pdf though
this comes under "advanced usage" IYSWIM:

I think you cannot just type

gs -sDEVICE=something -sOutputFile=xyz%d.pdf xyz.ps

its more complicated than that,

I need to have a session studying the material before I can
tell you how to do this. Its something I should look into
so maybe this is a good time for me to find out the right way
to do this.

I have gone in the other direction converting pdf to ps:

I had a delinquent pdf doc, namely a 3rd party GS manual!:

(yes you need a help doc to access the help doc, usual problem!)

the doc insisted on being printed in landscape causing
very inefficient page usage, like many printers my printer
cannot do landscape: only portrait,

(when you buy a printer study the in tray: capacity + size
limitations: a4 landscape? == a3 portrait!)

only way out would be to use a5 landscape,

so I fixed the problem by converting the pdf to ps,
and then hacking the 5? Megabyte Postscript file by adding
a 90° rotation on every page via the Postscript language,

it then printed perfectly,

I couldnt just put 1 90° rotation at the start because the
document insisted on reasserting its landscape setting on
each page also I couldnt load it into Memacs because it
was too big for Memacs,

send me an email message if you want me to look into
how you do ps to pdf via GS813 and I will look into it Friday onwards,

I am 110% certain it can be done, though off the cuff I have
no idea how, probably will involve -sDEVICE=pdfwrite,


whoosh

[whoosh777]

@djnick 

I have to complete this post by 930pm as someone
 may be phoning me regarding some repairwork,

I have managed to find how to convert ps to pdf,

it is via a Unix script GS813:lib/ps2pdf,

unfortunately all the stuff in GS813:lib has MSDOS
newlines, the unix scripts need to have these
MSDOS newlines stripped else they dont function,

however I mustnt do this to all files there or
GS813 may stop functioning,

I will upload the new gs813lib.lha with MSDOS newlines
removed ASAP but maybe not tonight,

To run Unix scripts you need a Geek shell, I will
try and create a "Geek in a box" upload to download
that will create an instant minimal Geek environment,
this should happen by Sunday midnight at the latest,

you will need this to get a Geek shell if you dont have
one already,

This the shell history of converting ram:tiger.eps
to ram:tiger.pdf:

4>sh
$ ps2pdf
Usage: ps2pdfwr [options...] (input.[e]ps|-) [output.pdf|-]
$ ps2pdf ram:tiger.eps ram:tiger.pdf
$ exit
4>getenv PATH
./:/bin:/c:/gs813/bin:/gs813/lib
4>list ram:tiger.pdf
Directory "ram:" on Tuesday 23-Mar-04
tiger.pdf                        36800 ----rwed Today     21:01:22
1 file - 37 blocks used
4>

very quick explanation, more thorough explanation
will appear on the website:

the PATH env variable needs to be set up correctly
so that GS813:bin and GS813:lib are in the Unix path,

sh above begins the Geekgadgets pdksh shell,

ps2pdf without args tells you usage info,

lastly I use it,

there is also ps2pdf12, ps2pdf13 ps2pdf14
to produce pdf 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 compatibility level,

Because I have ported GS813 around AmigaDOS filename convention
the args to ps2pdf need to be in AmigaDOS format and not in
Unix format (ram:xyz and not /ram/xyz),

ok its 920pm, must rush,
will try to revisit later tonight,

there are lots of other useful unix scripts in GS813:lib
eg convert to or from ps, ascii, pdf, etc,

whoosh

[djnick]

Uhh, to be honest, I hardly have more free time to play with CLI or SHELL stuff

I thought - it would be great if you can create user friendly archive - you know, you download, unpack archive, click on nice Install glow icon, then all necessary GS files copies on system and then installer will let you have MUI or Reaction GUI for converting and/or printing PostScript files...

All this seems a little bit complicated to me, sorry

All best! dj.

[whoosh777]

@djnick,

Some people contact me who refuse to be happy,
eg 1 guy who kept telling me that GS8 was
not as good as GS650,

I sent him a test document to try out,
a picture of a square,

he complained that on GS8 the square was not centred,
but on GS650 it was centred,

so I told him the square was not meant to be centred,
if it was centred the rendering was wrong

the square was meant to be at the lowest leftmost part of the
page,

he then quickly changed his mind about the image by
several inches both on GS650 and on GS8 in such a way
as to prove that GS8 was no good,

anyway it became clear he was just inventing information
to annoy me,

so I gave up,

I must admit it was entertaining the lengths he went to,
to invent information to annoy me, I sent him an email
inventing my own malfunctions of GS8,

>Uhh, to be honest, I hardly have more free time to play with CLI or SHELL stuff

but dont you have tab filename completion?

I have uploaded an AmigaOS shell script for ps to pdf conversion,

If you use c:requestfile and iconx you can create an icon that
will let you choose input file + output file via requester,

c:requestfile title "select input PS file" drawer ram: >env:infile
c:requestfile title "select output PDF file" drawer ram: >env:outfile
stack 150000
GS813:lib/ps2pdf.amiga $infile $outfile

:give this script an icon and put c:iconx as the default tool,
call it my_ps_to_pdf

then when you double click it 2 requesters will appear 1 for
input ps file and 1 for output pdf file,

thats it,

(may need some fixing for files that have spaces in the path),

>I thought - it would be great if you can create user friendly archive
>- you know, you download, unpack archive,

only thing then is you end up with a huge archive 9.8 Mb
for all the archives, about 8.8Mb for the fpu-only download,

my website isnt big enough to have it both ways,

if I modify one of the sub archives I dont want to have to
re-upload the entire huge archive, it could take 1.5 hours  
each time as I dont yet have Broadband,

you said above:

>I hardly have more free time to play with CLI or SHELL stuff

and I hardly have free time to play with 10Mb archives,

Now if you want to donate some webspace for such an archive
we can look into this, I think I have just 30Mb webspace,

(think how quickly you fill up a 30Mb partition, the website
is effectively a 30Mb partition),

>click on nice Install glow icon,
>then all necessary GS files copies on system and then installer will
>let you have MUI or Reaction GUI for converting and/or printing PostScript files...

Peer Richter created an installer for GS8, but I havent had any email
replies from him, he may have changed ISP,

Now if you or someone else wants to create an installer script for this,

its just 6 shell commands to install,
and 5 assigns and a stack setting for startup,

its not as long as say an encyclopedia or a forum post,
in fact your post is considerably longer than the install + startup commands
and that didnt hurt or did it?

(and most of the install and startup can be done by cut + paste + modify
of the same shell command via shell history),

>All this seems a little bit complicated to me, sorry

less ascii than your post :?

I think whatever I do you wont be happy,


If you have Turboprint then that has a GUI for communicating to GS,

printing is complicated, there are limits to what you can do via a GUI,

my printer has a 2Meg RAM, this means it has to use compression
to be able to fit a 600dpi page, 600dpi== approx 8 * 12 * 600 * 600/8 bytes
== 4320000 bytes == 4.3 Mb,

unfortunately some 600dpi a4 pages compressed are > 2 Mb, so cannot be
printed,

often the cover page of a document cannot be done but all the other pages
can

[djnick]

No, I will be very happy if you can put just a little more effort and finish installation and make GS user friendly for other ppl, not just programmers and unix like ppl, please I am not programmer [nor will ever be] as I work lots of other stuff. And yes, I have TAB file name completion [KingKON:]

But I can help you by giving you 90MB of free space to put your archive on my ftp server, if this will help you. I have ~90MB free on my never finished www.deetronic.co.yu site.

dj.