GSview 4.0 serial key or number

GNU gv - View PostScript and PDF documents using ghostscript.

This is the First edition of the GNU gv Manual, updated for gv version 3.7.4.

Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997 Johannes Plass

Copyright © 2004 José E. Marchesi

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

GNU gv allows to view and navigate through PostScript and PDF documents on an X display by providing a user interface for the ghostscript interpreter.

Please note that gv is derived from Tim Theisen’s ghostview.

2 Invoking gv

The name of the file to be displayed. The file ending may be omitted. may point to a compressed file (gzipped, bzipped, zipped or compressed). Viewing PDF files requires at least ghostscript version 4.x.

Read and use additional resources from the file . These resources have higher priority than those provided in the context of the option.

Whether to use antialiasing.

Start ghostscrip with additional options as specified by the string .

Whether the page should be centered automatically.

Determines if document structuring convention () comments should be respected or ignored. If is used gv will not attempt to examine the structure of the document but will pass the file to the ghostscript interpreter as a whole. In this case no page numbers are shown and freely moving around in the document is not possible. This option may help when viewing files not conforming to the document structuring conventions.

Defines the behaviour of the postscript scanner used to examine the structure of the document. If is used the scanner will ignore end of file () comments. This may help when viewing documents which import other documents without enclosing them within the proper "BeginDocument" and "EndDocument" comments. If is used, the scanner treats an comment as marking the end of the file.

Selects the fullscreen mode.

Do not show any ghostscript messages in an info popup window.

Only show error messages from ghostscript in an info popup window.

Shows all ghostscript messages in an info popup window.

If is used gv tries to maintain off-screen regions of the displayed page by allocating a sufficiently large pixmap. If is used the X Server is responsible for maintaining obscured portions of the displayed page (see also the useBackingPixmap resource).

Print the version number of gv to standard output and exit.

Display a short help message and exit.

must be an integer or a positive float. In case is an integer, selects the scale entry relative to the scale 1.0. With the special value of Fit to page is selected, and likewise with the value of Fit widthto page is selected. In case is a float, selects an arbitrary scale.

Selects the scale base .

Sets the color palette to be used.

Selects the paper size to be used. Valid values are names of paper sizes that appear in the list of page medias as given by the resource.

Display the page with label first.

Sets the orientation. Valid values for are , , and .

Whether to start ghostscript with the option.

Whether ghostscrip is allowed to automatically fit the size of its window to the size of the displayed page.

When opening a file, use PASSWORD to decrypt it. This Option is usefull for viewing encrypted PDF files.

Is actually a shortcut for .

Whether to start ghostscript in safer mode (that includes he option or the mode where appropriate) and the option.

Whether to start ghostscript from a safe direcotry or not.

This is a shortcut for .

Read and use additional resources from the file . These resources have lower priority than those provided in the context of the option.

Whether to interchange the meaning of the orientations landscape and seascape.

The option causes gv to check the document periodically. If changes are detected gv will automatically display the newer version of the file. The document is by default checked once every second. This can be changed via the watchFileFrequency resource. Note that sending gv the SIGHUP signal also causes an update of the displayed document. This method may be used by document creators to trigger gv remotely.

This is a shortcut for .

3 Resources

3.1 Resource files

In general gv does not depend on any external resource files. However, when starting gv, preferences are read from

a system specific resource file.

The name of this file is GV and is installed on as part of gv’s architecture independent library. Usually the library files are installed on .

Administrators may want to modify this file in order to set up gv according to the local needs of their system.

a user specific resource file.

The name of this file is either or as described by the environment variable.

The files and (located in the library directory of gv, which is most probably either or ) may serve as a basis for constructing the user and system specific resource files.

Note that the user and system specific resource files are not the only sources of preferences taken into account when gv is started. However, in practice these are the most important.

3.2 Resources of gv

The following describes some of the resources of gv. The precise syntax of some of the resource values may be inferred from the appended default system specific resource file.

antialias

Whether antialiasing should be used. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

autoCenter

Whether the displayed page should automatically be centered (for instance when opening a new file). Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

autoResize

Whether gv is allowed to resize the main window according to the size of the current page. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

confirmPrint

Whether printing requires an extra confirmation. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

confirmQuit

Whether leaving gv requires extra confirmation. Valid values are (Never), (When processing) and (Always). The default value is , which causes a confirmation request when trying to leave gv in the presence of pending PDF to Postscript conversions.

scrollingEyeGuide

If this resource is scrolling via the keyboard causes a temporary border to be drawn around the previously visible area of the page. Allowed values are and .

It defaults to .

infoVerbose

Defines the behavior of the info popup which shows messages from ghostscript. Valid values are (Never), (show only errror messages) and (Any message is being shown).

It defaults to .

xinerama

Defines whether the display resolution is determined by xinerama. Valid values are (use Xinerama if available), (do not use Xinerama) and (heuristically decide whether to use Xinerama or not).

It defaults to .

ignoreEOF

Defines the behaviour of the postscript scanner as described in the Options section. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

respectDSC

Determines whether gv should attempt to respect document structuring comments. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

reverseScrolling

Defines the interpretation of directions when scrolling with the mouse. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

swapLandscape

Whether the meaning of and should be interchanged. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

scratchDir

Specifies a directory used to store temporary data.

It defaults to the invocation directory.

defaultSaveDir

Specifies the default destination directory for files to be saved.

It defaults to the home directory, .

useBackingPixmap

If the value of this resource is the X Server is advised that saving off-screen pixels of the displayed page would be beneficial (maintaining backing store). In this case gv does not actively maintain the contents of the page but relies on the X Server. The server is, however, always free to stop maintaining backing backing store. If the value of this resource is the X Server is advised that maintaining backing store is not useful. In this case gv attempts to allocate a sufficiently large pixmap to store the contents of the displayed page.

It defaults to .

watchFile

Whether the document should be checked periodically and updated automatically if changes are detected. Valid values are and .

It defaults to .

watchFileFrequency

Defines the time in milliseconds elapsing between successive checks of the document when watchFile is set to . Allowed values must be larger than 500.

It defaults to .

printCommand

The command used for printing a file. The command may contain multiple wildcards which will be replaced by the name of the file to be printed.

It defaults to .

saveposFilename

This file is used for saving positions by the and keys.

It defaults to .

gsInterpreter

The command used to start the ghostscript interpreter.

It defaults to .

gsCmdScanPDF

The command used to extract document structuring comments from a PDF file.

It defaults to

gsCmdConvPDF

The command used to convert a PDF file to PostScript.

It defaults to

gsX11Device

The ghostscript command line option which activates the X11 device.

It defaults to

gsX11AlphaDevice

The ghostscript command line option which activates the X11 device with antialiasing enabled.

It defaults to

gsSafeeDir

Determines whether ghostscript should be started from a safe directory.

It defaults to .

gsSafer

Determines whether ghostscript should be started with the command line option.

It defaults to .

gsQuiet

Determines whether ghostscript should be started with the command line option.

It defaults to .

gsArguments

May be used to provide additional command line options for the ghostscript interpreter. Starting gv with the option will override this resource setting.

It defaults to the empty string.

magMenu

Describes the menu that pops up when preparing to to zoom an area of the displayed page.

dirs

Defines a list of directories accessible via the menu in the file selection window. The special value corresponds to the users home directory, the value corresponds to the scratch directory as defined by the scratchDir resource.

It defaults to

filter

Defines the default filter to be used when displaying a directory contents in the file selection window. A filter is specified according to the syntax

<filter> := [<filespecs>] [no <filespecs>] <filespecs> := <filespec> [<filespecs>] <filespec> := filename possibly including wildcards '*' which match any character.

Example: The filter

GV*filter: *.ps *.pdf no .*

screens out all files with names starting with a dot and keeps of the remaining ones only those which end on or .

It defaults to

filters

Defines a list of filters offered in the Filters menu of the file selection window. The filter has a special meaning causing all files to be displayed when the corresponding menu entry is selected.

miscMenuEntries

Describes the menu that pops up when clicking with the third mouse button on the displayed page. The value of this resource is a list of menu entries.

Allowed entries are

titleStyle

Whether the name of the displayed document should be shown in the title bar of the window. The name of gv’s icon will also change accordingly if this resource is set to .

If this is , no title will be shown. means to show a the document title or the file name if there is no document title. Only the file name is shown with .

It defaults to .

maximumWidth, maximumHeight

When resizing gv will not attempt to exceed the size specified by these resources. These resources may be specified as a positive integer or as , optionally combined with a positive or negative offset. The default values listed above provide examples for this syntax. will automatically be replaced by the size of the screen.

defaults to . defaults to .

minimumWidth, minimumHeight

Defines a minimum size for the main window. Valid values for both resources are positive integers larger than 200.

defaults to . defaults to .

scale

Sets the initial scale. The value of this resource is the offset of the scale to be selected relative to the scale 1.0 in the the Scale menu.

It defaults to .

scaleBase

Selects the initial scale base. The value of this resource should be a positive integer.

It defaults to .

scales

Defines the available scales bases and scales in the Scale menu.

orientation

Sets the initial orientation. Valid values are

causes gv to attempt to derive the correct orientation from document structuring comments.

It defaults to .

fallbackOrientation

Defines the paper-size to be used when automatic orientation detetction fails. Valid values are , , and .

It defaults to .

medias

A list describing the page medias known to gv. List entries starting with or will not appear in the Media menu but will still be used for automatic paper size detection.

pageMedia

Sets the paper size. Allowd values are as given in the above list of paper-sizes. Specifying causes gv to attempt to derive the correct paper-size from document structuring comments.

It defaults to .

fallbackPageMedia

Defines the paper-size to be used when automatic paper-size detetction fails. Valid values are as given in the above list of paper-sizes.

It defaults to .

strings.*

Variuos strings for translating GNU gv.

4 Mouse and key bindings

4.1 Mouse bindings in the Main and the Zoom window

The following mouse events are defined when the mouse pointer is either on the displayed page or on a zoomed area:

press button 1, move mouse, release button 1

Scrolls the displayed page ’proportionally’.

press button 3, move mouse, release button 3

Scrolls the displayed page ’absolutely’.

double-click with button 1

In the main window this displays the previous/next page if the double-click occured in the left/right half of the window. In a zoom window it does nothing.

press button 2, release button 2

Pops up a small menu which allows to choose a magnification for a certain area around the current mouse position. After selecting a magnification a zoom window pops up displaying the area at the chosen scale.

press button 2, move mouse, release button 2

This draws and thereby defines a rectangular region which can be displayed in a zoom window. The magnification for the area can be selected by means of a popup menu which appears after releasing button 2.

press button 1, press button 2

Reload the current page. This event sequence works only in the main window.

press button 3, release button 3

Pops up a small menu which offers a few standard actions like ’Reload’, ’Mark Page’, etc.

4.2 Mouse bindings in the File Selection popup

The following mouse events are defined when the mouse pointer is in the window of either a file or a directory list:

press button 1, move mouse, release button 1

Scrolls a file or directory list ’proportionally’.

press button 2, move mouse, release button 2

Scrolls a file or directory list ’absolutely’.

press button 2, release button 2

Scrolls a file or directory list one page up/down if the button was pressed in the upper/lower half of the list.

double-click with button 1 on a filename

Selects the file and closes the File Selection popup.

click with button 1 on a directory name

Causes the contents of this directory to be displayed.

4.3 Mouse bindings in the Table of Contents

The following mouse events are defined when the mouse pointer is in the window showing a list of page numbers of the current file (table of contents):

press button 1, move mouse, release button 1

Scrolls the table of contents.

press button 1 on a page number

Go to this page.

press button 2 on a page number

Mark this page if it is unmarked, but unmark it if it is marked.

press button 2, move mouse, release button 2

Marks/unmarks all unmarked/marked pages in the region crossed by the mouse pointer during the movement.

4.4 Mouse bindings in the Panner widget

The Panner widget is the rectangular region located close to the left edge of the main window. It indicates the size and the position of the visible area of the current page relative to the total page.

The following mouse events are defined when the mouse pointer is in this region:

press button 1, move mouse

Scrolls the displayed page.

press button 2

Display the previous page.

press button 3

Display the next page.

4.5 Mouse bindings in the << and >> button windows

The << and >> buttons are used to move to another page. The following mouse events are defined:

press button 1

Move 1 page forward/backwards.

press button 2

Move 5 pages forward/backwards.

press button 3

Move 10 pages forward/backwards.

4.6 Key Bindings

The following key events are defined in the main window. Those bindings scrolling the page are also defined in zoom popups.

4.6.1 Notation

means press and key

means press and key

means press or and key

4.6.2 Miscellaneous keys:

Toggle antialiasing on and off

Open a new file

Quit gv

Toggle gv’s resizing behaviour

Respect/Ignore document structuring

Watch file / Don’t watch file

Save the marked pages

Save the current file

Print the marked pages

Print the current file

Switches to presentation mode by forking a new GNU gv process.

Reload the current page

Reload the current page

Reopen the current file

Mark the current page

Unmark the current page

append the current coordinate to a file whose name is given by the resource.

enter a command with the current coordinate as its default parameter. By defalt it is % TODO \PutAtPos(x,y)(), where x,y are the current coordinate and the user can put needed commands into (). This command is appended to a file whose name is given by the resource.

4.6.3 Orientation

Orientation portrait

Orientation landscape

Orientation upside-down

Orientation seascape

4.6.4 Magnification

Select the scale entry -6 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry -5 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry -4 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry -3 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry -2 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry -1 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale 1.0 (for german keyboard layout)

Select the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry 1 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry 2 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry 3 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry 4 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry 5 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the scale entry 6 relative to the scale 1.0

Select the next scale entry

Select the next scale entry

Select the previous scale entry

4.6.5 Navigating

Scroll in the direction of the arrow

Scroll columns up or jump -1 pages

Scroll columns down or jump 1 pages

Scroll rows left or jump -1 pages

Scroll rows right or jump 1 pages

Jump -1 pages (to top/left corner)

Jump 1 pages (to top/left corner)

Jump -5 pages (to top/left corner)

Jump 5 pages (to top/left corner)

Identical to arrow up

Identical to arrow down

Identical to arrow left

Identical to arrow left

Identical to arrow right

Center the page

Scroll columns up or jump -1 pages

Scroll columns down or jump 1 pages

Scroll columns up or jump -1 pages

Jump -5 pages

Jump 5 pages

Go to the first page

Go to the last page

Jump -1 pages

Jump 1 pages

Highlight a page number

Highlight previous page number

Highlight next page number

Jump to the highlighted page

Scroll columns up

Scroll columns up

Scroll columns down

Jump -1 pages

Jump 1 pages

5 Comments about the user interface

5.1 Scales

The Scale menu which allows to view the document at different sizes is divided into two parts. The first part shows a list of available scale bases, the second part, separated by a line, lists the relative scales which are applied with respect to the selected scale base.

By default two scales bases are available, the Natural size and the Pixel based base. When choosing the Pixel based scale base a relative scale of 1.0 causes one postscript point to correspond to one pixel on the screen.

When viewing a document at a relative scale of 1.0 using the Natural size base the page should appear in its real size, as if printed on paper. For the Natural size base to work properly gv has to know the correct size of the root window. Automatic detection of this size unfortunately only provides approximate results, therefore it is best if it is provided by the user. To do so the resource

should be added to the property of the screen the document is viewed on, with and describing the width and height of the root window in units of millimeters. For instance by using the command

a width of 346 mm and a height of 291 mm will be used for the Natural size scale base. Alternatively the resource

may be added to a resource file read by gv. Here , and describe the display on which gv displays the document. For instance, if the display is set to the resource should be specified as

Note that this method doesn’t work on VMS. As a last alternative the resource

may be added to one of the resource files. However, for obvious reasons this method should be used only on single user machines.

5.2 Scrolling

It is probably a de facto standard for user interfaces that windows are supposed to be scrolled by means of scrollbars attached to their sides. However, for various reasons the use of scrollbars has been minimized in gv.

Instead, in all windows with obscured data, scrolling may be performed by

pressing button1, moving the mouse, then releasing button1

directly in the window. This includes the displayed page, zoom popups, the table of contents and the file and directory lists displayed in the file selection popup.

5.3 Displaying new versions of a document

During document creation it is usually desirable to always display the newest version of the document in work.

Instead of explicitly loading it via the file selection popup the most recent version can be displayed by pressing the Reload button in the main window. Choosing the Reload entry in the menu that pops up when clicking with the third mouse button anywhere on the displayed page certainly has the same effect.

More comfortable is the "Watch File" feature which may be switched on by selecting the corresponding entry in the State menu. If activated gv will check every now and then if a new version of the displayed file exists. If so it will be displayed automatically. By default the file is checked about once every second.

Finally it may also be left to the document creating program to trigger gv to update its display. To do so the program should send the SIGHUP signal to gv. For instance at the end of a shell script generating a postscript file from latex sources the line

may be added (here is the process id of gv). Executing the script and thereby creating a new version of the document will then also cause the result to be displayed instantaneously. Please note that this feature is available only on X11 R6 based systems.

6 Frequently asked questions

6.1 What happened to the scroll bars?

They have been removed in order to make more room for the image. The displayed portion of the image may be moved by dragging the image or the paner (panel between the "Save Marked" and << >> buttons) with the mouse. Alternatively, the cursor arrow keys can be used.

6.2 How can I make even more room for the image?

Use the "spartan" style by starting gv with the command

This removes the "Open", "Print", "Save", "Reload", and page marking buttons (they are still available from the "File" and "Page" menus) and replaces them with the document attribute controls, which are normally along the top.

6.3 Small characters are not very clear

Antialiasing can improve the display of bitmapped fonts (eg. from TeX) when displayed on a colour or greyscale screen. The same technique is used by xdvi. Note that antialiasing requires at least Ghostscript version 4.x.

Antialiasing can be turned on from the "State" menu, and can be made default by saving the setting in .

6.4 The output is not refreshed automatically

There are two methods that can be used to save the contents of the window when it’s not currently displayed: backing store and backing pixmap. Some X-servers seem to support only backing store (eg. VAXstations) and some only backing pixmap (eg. some X-terminals, including EWS).

In order to force gv to use one method or the other, use the menu and toggle the "Backing Pixmap" button. When selected/highlighted (normally the default), gv will use backing pixmap; otherwise it will use backing store. Select "Apply" to use a new setting and "Save" to make it the new default.

7 gv internals

7.1 Interface with ghostscript

7.1.1 Ghostview interface to ghostscript

When the environment variable is set, ghostscript draws on an existing drawable rather than creating its own window. Ghostscript can be directed to draw on either a window or a pixmap.

7.1.2 Drawing on a Window

The environment variable contains the window id of the target window. The window id is an integer. Ghostscript will use the attributes of the window to obtain the width, height, colormap, screen, and visual of the window. The remainder of the information is gotten from the GHOSTVIEW property on that window.

7.1.3 Drawing on a Pixmap

The GHOSTVIEW environment variable contains a window id and a pixmap id. They are integers separated by white space. Ghostscript will use the attributes of the window to obtain the colormap, screen, and visual to use. The width and height will be obtained from the pixmap. The remainder of the information, is gotten from the GHOSTVIEW property on the window. In this case, the property is deleted when read.

7.1.4 The GHOSTVIEW environment variable

parameters

scanf format

Explanation of parameters:

tells ghostscript where to

• read the GHOSTVIEW property
• send events

If pixmap-id is not present, ghostscript will draw on this window.

If present, tells ghostscript that a pixmap will be used as the final destination for drawing. The window will not be touched for drawing purposes.

7.1.5 The GHOSTVIEW property

type

STRING

parameters

scanf format

Explanation of parameters:

pixmap id of the backing pixmap for the window. If no pixmap is to be used, this parameter should be zero. This parameter must be zero when drawing on a pixmap.

orientation of the page. The number represents clockwise rotation of the paper in degrees. Permitted values are 0, 90, 180, 270.

Bounding box of the drawable. The bounding box is specified in PostScript points in default user coordinates.

Resolution of window. (This can be derived from the other parameters, but not without roundoff error. These values are included to avoid this error.)

Margins around the window. The margins extend the imageable area beyond the boundaries of the window. This is primarily used for popup zoom windows. I have encountered several instances of PostScript programs that position themselves with respect to the imageable area. The margins are specified in PostScript points. If omitted, the margins are assumed to be 0.

7.1.6 Events from ghostscript

If the final destination is a pixmap, the client will get a property notify event when ghostscript reads the GHOSTVIEW property causing it to be deleted.

Ghostscript sends events to the window where it read the GHOSTVIEW property. These events are of type ClientMessage. The message_type is set to either PAGE or DONE. The first long data value gives the window to be used to send replies to ghostscript. The second long data value gives the primary drawable. If rendering to a pixmap, it is the primary drawable. If rendering to a window, the backing pixmap is the primary drawable. If no backing pixmap is employed, then the window is the primary drawable. This field is necessary to distinguish multiple ghostscripts rendering to separate pixmaps where the GHOSTVIEW property was placed on the same window.

The PAGE message indicates that a "page" has completed. Ghostscript will wait until it receives a ClientMessage whose message_type is NEXT before continuing.

The DONE message indicates that ghostscript has finished processing.

7.2 Comments recognized by ghostview

Preview section:

Defaults section:

Prolog section:

Setup section:

Page properties:

Document section:

Binary section:

Data section:

7.3 Paper Keywords and paper size in points

Appendix A GNU General Public License

Preamble

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program—to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.

For the developers’ and authors’ protection, the GPL clearly explains that there is no warranty for this free software. For both users’ and authors’ sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to authors of previous versions.

Some devices are designed to deny users access to install or run modified versions of the software inside them, although the manufacturer can do so. This is fundamentally incompatible with the aim of protecting users’ freedom to change the software. The systematic pattern of such abuse occurs in the area of products for individuals to use, which is precisely where it is most unacceptable. Therefore, we have designed this version of the GPL to prohibit the practice for those products. If such problems arise substantially in other domains, we stand ready to extend this provision to those domains in future versions of the GPL, as needed to protect the freedom of users.

Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not allow patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose computers, but in those that do, we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program could make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1. Definitions.

   “This License” refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

   “Copyright” also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of works, such as semiconductor masks.

   “The Program” refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as “you”. “Licensees” and “recipients” may be individuals or organizations.

   To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier work.

   A “covered work” means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.

   To “propagate” a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well.

   To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

   An interactive user interface displays “Appropriate Legal Notices” to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2) tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion.

2. Source Code.

   The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. “Object code” means any non-source form of a work.

   A “Standard Interface” means an interface that either is an official standard defined by a recognized standards body, or, in the case of interfaces specified for a particular programming language, one that is widely used among developers working in that language.

   The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to the public in source code form. A “Major Component”, in this context, means a major essential component (kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.

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Table of contents

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview. You may also be interested in how to build Ghostscript and install it, as well as the description of the driver interface.

Documentation for some older, superceded devices has been moved to another document. In general such devices are deprecated and will be removed in future versions of Ghostscript. In general all older printer drivers can be replaced by the ijs interface and one of the available 3rd party raster driver collections. We recommend moving to the ijs device for all such printing.

Notes on measurements

Several different important kinds of measures appear throughout this document: inches, centimeters and millimeters, points, and bits per pixel.

Centimeters and millimeters

ISO standard paper sizes such as A4 and A3 are commonly represented in the SI units of centimeters and millimeters. Centimeters are abbreviated , millimeters . ISO A4 paper is quite close to 210×297 millimeters (approximately 8.3×11.7 inches).

Inches

1 inch equals 2.54 centimeters. The inch measure is sometimes represented by or a quotation mark (") to the right of a measure, like 8.5in or 8.5". U.S. "letter" paper is exactly 8.5in×11in, approximately 21.6cm×27.9cm. (See in the usage documentation all the paper sizes predefined in Ghostscript.)

Points

Points are a measure traditionally used in the printing trade and now in PostScript, which specifies exactly 72 points per inch (approximately 28.35 per centimeter). The paper sizes known to Ghostscript are defined in the initialization file in terms of points.

Dots per inch

Dots per inch or is the common measure of printing resolution in the US.

Bits per pixel

Commonly abbreviated this is the number of digital bits used to represent the color of each pixel. This is also referred to as 'bit depth' or 'pixel depth'.

Image file formats

Ghostscript supports output to a variety of image file formats and is widely used for rasterizing postscript and pdf files. A collection of such formats ('output devices' in Ghostscript terminology) are described in this section.

Here are some commonly useful driver options that apply to all raster drivers. Options specific to particular file formats are described in their respective sections below.

-sOutputFile=filename

This is a general option telling Ghostscript what to name the output. It can either be a single filename '' or a template '' where the is replaced by the page number.

-rres

-rxresxyres

This option sets the resolution of the output file in dots per inch. The default value if you don't specify this options is usually 72 dpi.

-dTextAlphaBits=n

-dGraphicsAlphaBits=n

These options control the use of subsample antialiasing. Their use is highly recommended for producing high quality rasterizations of the input files. The size of the subsampling box n should be 4 for optimum output, but smaller values can be used for faster rendering. Antialiasing is enabled separately for text and graphics content.

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.

It is also conventional to call Ghostscript with the '' trio of options when rasterizing to a file. These suppress interactive prompts and enable some security checks on the file to be run. Please see the Use documentation for a complete description.

PNG file format

(pronounced 'ping') stands for Portable Network Graphics, and is the recommended format for high-quality images. It supports full quality color and transparency, offers excellent lossless compression of the image data, and is widely supported. Please see the PNG website for a complete description of the format.

Ghostscript provides a variety of devices for output varying by bit depth. For normal use we recommend for 24-bit RGB color, or for grayscale. The , and devices respectively provide 8-bit color, 4-bit color and black-and-white for special needs. The device is also a black-and-white device, but the output is formed from an internal 8 bit grayscale rendering which is then error diffused and converted down to 1bpp.

The device is 32-bit RGBA color with transparency indicating pixel coverage. The background is transparent unless it has been explicitly filled. PDF 1.4 transparent files do not give a transparent background with this device. Text and graphics anti-aliasing are enabled by default.

Options

The , , and devices all respond to the following:

integer

This causes the internal rendering to be scaled down by the given (integer <= 8) factor before being output. For example, the following will produce a 200dpi output png from a 600dpi internal rendering:

The device responds to the following option:

state (0 to 4; default = 1)

This option allows a minimum feature size to be set; if any output pixel appears on its own, or as part of a group of pixels smaller than x , it will be expanded to ensure that it does. This is useful for output devices that are high resolution, but that have trouble rendering isolated pixels.

While this parameter will accept values from 0 to 4, not all are fully implemented. 0 and 1 cause no change to the output (as expected). 2 works as specified. Values of 3 and 4 are accepted for compatibility, but behave as for 2.

The device responds to the following option:

16#RRGGBB (RGB color, default white = 16#ffffff)

For the device only, set the suggested background color in the PNG bKGD chunk. When a program reading a PNG file does not support alpha transparency, the PNG library converts the image using either a background color if supplied by the program or the bKGD chunk. One common web browser has this problem, so when using on a web page you would need to use when creating alpha transparent PNG images for use on the page.

Examples

Examples of how to use Ghostscript to convert postscript to PNG image files:

JPEG file format (JFIF)

Ghostscript includes output drivers that can produce jpeg files from postscript or pdf images. These are the and devices.

Technically these produce Independent JPEG Group JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format) files, the common sort found on the web.

Please note that JPEG is a compression method specifically intended for continuous-tone images such as photographs, not for graphics, and it is therefore quite unsuitable for the vast majority of page images produced with PostScript. For anything other than pages containing simple images the lossy compression of the jpeg format will result in poor quality output regardless of the input. To learn more about the distinction, consult a reference about uses and abuses of JPEG, such as the JPEG FAQ

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/

Examples

You can use the JPEG output drivers -- to produce color JPEG files and for grayscale JPEGs -- the same as other file-format drivers: by specifying the device name and an output file name, for example

Options

The JPEG devices support several special parameters to control the JPEG "quality setting" (DCT quantization level).

N (integer from 0 to 100, default 75)

Set the quality level N according to the widely used IJG quality scale, which balances the extent of compression against the fidelity of the image when reconstituted. Lower values drop more information from the image to achieve higher compression, and therefore have lower quality when reconstituted.

M (float from 0.0 to 1.0)

Adobe's QFactor quality scale, which you may use in place of above. The QFactor scale is used by PostScript's DCTEncode filter but is nearly unheard-of elsewhere.

At this writing the default JPEG quality level of 75 is equivalent to , but the JPEG default might change in the future. There is currently no support for any additional JPEG compression options, such as the other DCTEncode filter parameters.

PNM

The PNM (portable network map) family of formats are very simple uncompressed image formats commonly used on unix-like systems. They are particularly useful for testing or as input to an external conversion utility.

A wide variety of data formats and depths is supported. Devices include .

TIFF file formats

is a loose collection of formats, now largely superceded by except in applications where backward compatibility or special compression is required. The file format is described in the TIFF 6.0 Specification published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Note that, due to the structure of the TIFF format, writing TIFF output requires that the target file be seekable. Writing to stdout, pipes or other similar stream is not supported. Attempting to do so will generate an error.

There are two unrelated sets of TIFF drivers. There are five color TIFF drivers that produce uncompressed output:

Produces 8-bit gray output.

Produces 12-bit RGB output (4 bits per component).

Produces 24-bit RGB output (8 bits per component).

Produces 48-bit RGB output (16 bits per component).

Produces 32-bit CMYK output (8 bits per component).

Produces 64-bit CMYK output (16 bits per component).

The device creates multiple output files: a single 32 bit composite CMYK file and multiple tiffgray files, one for each separation (unless is specified). If separation files are being produced and more than one page is being generated, the output file specification must include a format specifier (e.g ) so that each page can have a uniquely named set of separation files.

The default compression is but this may be overridden by the option.

The file specified via the OutputFile command line parameter will contain CMYK data. This data is based upon the CMYK data within the file plus an equivalent CMYK color for each spot color. The equivalent CMYK color for each spot color is determined using the alternate tint transform function specified in the Separation and DeviceN color spaces. Since this file is created based upon having color planes for each colorant, the file will correctly represent the appearance of overprinting with spot colors.

File names for the separations for the CMYK colorants are created by appending '.Cyan.tif', '.Magenta.tif' '.Yellow.tif' or '.Black.tif' to the end of the file name specified via the OutputFile parameter. File names for the spot color separation files are created by appending the Spot color name in '(' and ').tif' to the filename.

If desired the file names for the spot color separation files can be created by appending '.sn.tif' (where n is the spot color number, see below) to the end of the file name specified via the OutputFile parameter. This change is a compile time edit. To obtain this type of output the function create_separation_file_name in gdevtsep.c should be called with a true value for its use_sep_name parameter.

The device will automatically recognize spot colors. In this case their order is determined by when they are found in the input file. The names of spot colors may be specified via the SeparationColorNames device parameters.

Internally each spot color is assigned a spot color number. These numbers start with 0 for the first spot color. The spot color numbers are assigned in the same order as the names are printed to stderr (see below). This order also matches the ordering in the SeparationColorNames list, if this parameter is specified. The spot color numbers are not affected by the SeparationOrder parameter.

If only a subset of the colorants for a file is desired, then the separations to be output can be selected via the SeparationOrder device parameter. When colorants are selected via the SeparationOrder parameter, the composite CMYK output contains the equivalent CMYK data only for the selected colorants.

NOTE: the composite CMYK output, because it uses the tint transformed colour equivalents for any spot colours (see Postscript Language Reference "Separation Color Spaces" and "DeviceN Color Spaces"), may not produce an accurate preview, if the job uses overprinting.

The device also prints the names of any spot colors detected within a document to stderr. (stderr is also used for the output from the bbox device.) For each spot color, the name of the color is printed preceded by '%%SeparationName: '. This provides a simple mechanism for users and external applications to be informed about the names of spot colors within a document.

Generally Ghostscript will support a maximum of 64 process and spot colors. The device the device and the devices maintain rendered data in a planar form with a maximum of 64 planes set by the definition of GS_CLIENT_COLOR_MAX_COMPONENTS in the code. That is there can be up to 64 colorants accurately handled with overprint on a single page. If more than 64 colorants are encountered, those beyond 64 will be mapped to CMYK using the alternate tint transform.

When rendering a PDF document, Ghostscript can deteremine prior to rendering how many colorants occur on a particular page. With Postscript, this is not possible in general. To optimize for this, when rendering Postscript, it is possible to specify at run-time the number of spot colorants you wish to have the device capable of handling using the -dMaxSpots=N command option, where N is the number of spot colorants that you wish to be able to handle and must be no more than the 64 minus the number of process colors. For example, 60 or less for a CMYK device such as tiffsep. If you specify more than is needed, the document will render more slowly. The ideal case is to use the same number as the maximum number of spot colorants that occur on a single page of the document. If more spot colorants are encountered than is specified by -dMaxSpots, then a warning will be printed indicating that some spot colorants will be mapped to CMYK using the alternate tint transform.

The device accepts a option, which may be set to 8 (the default) or 1. In 1bpp mode, the device renders each component internally in 8 bits, but then converts down to 1bpp with error diffusion before output as described below in the device. No composite file is produced in 1bpp mode, only individual separations.

The device also accepts the and parameters as described below in the tiffscaled device, and in 1bpp mode.

When is used in 8 bit mode with the (and ///) device(s) 2 additional "special" ratios are available, 32 and 34. 32 provides a 3:2 downscale (so from 300 to 200 dpi, say). 34 produces a 3:4 upscale (so from 300 to 400 dpi, say).

The and devices can optionally use Even Toned Screening, rather than simple Floyd Steinberg error diffusion. This patented technique gives better quality at the expense of some speed. While the code used has many quality tuning options, none of these are currently exposed. Any device author interested in trying these options should contact Artifex for more information. Currently ETS can be enabled using -dDownScaleETS=1.

The device creates multiple output files, one for each component or separation color. The device creates multiple tiffg4 files (the compression can be set using -sCompression= described below). The 1 bit per component output is halftoned using the current screening set by 'setcolorscreen' or 'sethalftone' which allows for ordered dither or stochastic threshold array dither to be used. This is faster than error diffusion.

The file specified via the OutputFile command line parameter will not be created (it is opened, but deleted prior to finishing each page).

File names for the separations for the CMYK colorants are created by appending '(Cyan).tif', '(Magenta).tif' '(Yellow).tif' or '(Black).tif' to the to the end of the file name specified via the OutputFile parameter. File names for the spot color separation files are created by appending the Spot color name in '(' and ').tif' to the filename. If the file name specified via the OutputFile parameter ends with the suffix '.tif', then the suffix is removed prior to adding the component name in '(' and ').tif'.

The device renders internally at the specified resolution to an 8 bit greyscale image. This is then scaled down by an integer scale factor (set by described below) and then error diffused to give 1bpp output. The compression can be set using -sCompression= as described below.

The device renders internally at the specified resolution to an 8 bit cmyk image. This is then scaled down by an integer scale factor (set by = described below) and then error diffused to give 4bpp cmyk output. The compression can be set using -sCompression= as described below.

The device renders internally at the specified resolution to an 8 bit greyscale image. This is then scaled down by an integer scale factor (set by = described below). The compression can be set using -sCompression= as described below.

The device renders internally at the specified resolution to a 24 bit rgb image. This is then scaled down by an integer scale factor (set by = described below). The compression can be set using -sCompression= as described below.

The device renders internally at the specified resolution to a 32 bit cmyk image. This is then scaled down by an integer scale factor (set by = described below). The compression can be set using -sCompression= as described below.

The remaining TIFF drivers all produce black-and-white output with different compression modes:

G3 fax encoding with no EOLs

G3 fax encoding with EOLs

2-D G3 fax encoding

G4 fax encoding

LZW-compatible (tag = 5) compression

PackBits (tag = 32773) compression

See the option documentation below for important information about these devices.

Options

All TIFF drivers support creation of files that are comprised of more than a single strip. Multi-strip files reduce the memory requirement on the reader, since readers need only store and process one strip at a time. The parameter controls the strip size:

(non-negative integer; default = 8192)

Set the maximum (uncompressed) size of a strip.

The TIFF 6.0 specification, Section 7, page 27, recommends that the size of each strip be about 8 Kbytes.

If the value of the parameter is smaller than a single image row, then no error will be generated, and the TIFF file will be generated correctly using one row per strip. Note that smaller strip sizes increase the size of the file by increasing the size of the StripOffsets and StripByteCounts tables, and by reducing the effectiveness of the compression which must start over for each strip.

If the value of MaxStripSize is 0, then the entire image will be a single strip.

Since v. 8.51 the logical order of bits within a byte, FillOrder, tag = 266 is controlled by a parameter:

(default = 1)

If this option set to 2 then pixels are arranged within a byte such that pixels with lower column values are stored in the lower-order bits of the byte; otherwise pixels are arranged in reverse order.

Earlier versions of Ghostscript always generated TIFF files with FillOrder = 2. According to the TIFF 6.0 specification, Section 8, page 32, support of FillOrder = 2 is not required in a Baseline TIFF compliant reader

The writing of BigTIFF format output files is controlled with the parameter.

Unfortunately, due the unpredictable size of compressed output, we cannot automate the selection of BigTIFF, using it only when the output file grows large enough to warrant it.

(boolean, default: false)

Force use (or not) of BigTIFF format in output from TIFF devices

The writing of the DateTime TAG can be controlled using the parameter.

(boolean, default: true)

Write or otherwise the DateTime TAG to the TIFF output file. Thus to disable writing the TAG, use:

The compression scheme that is used for the image data can be set for all tiff devices with:

Change the compression scheme of the tiff device. , , and may only be used with 1 bit devices (including ).

For the device, it changes the compression scheme of the separation files and composite cmyk file (which is by default). It defaults to for the device.

The black-and-white TIFF devices also provide the following parameters:

(0, 1, or value; default = 1)

If this option is 1 then if the requested page width is in the range of either 1680..1736 or 2000..2056 columns, set the page width to A4 (1728 columns) or B4 (2048 columns) respectively. If this option is set to a value >1 then the width is unconditionally adjusted to this value.

This behavior is the default for all the fax based devices (i.e. all the black and white devices except , and ). Pass to force this behaviour off.

When using this option with it is the downsampled size that triggers the adjustment.

(0 to 4; default = 1)

This option allows a minimum feature size to be set; if any output pixel appears on its own, or as part of a group of pixels smaller than x , it will be expanded to ensure that it does. This is useful for output devices that are high resolution, but that have trouble rendering isolated pixels.

While this parameter will accept values from 0 to 4, not all are fully implemented. 0 and 1 cause no change to the output (as expected). 2 works as specified. 3 and 4 currently expand pixels correctly horizontally, but only expand vertically to the 2 pixel size.

The mechanism by which is implemented for is different, in that it is done as part of the error diffusion. Values of 0 to 2 work as expected, but values 3 and 4 (while accepted for compatibility) will behave as for 2.

The , , , and TIFF drivers also provide the following two parameters:

(small non-negative integer; default = 1)

If this option set then the page is downscaled by the given factor on both axes before error diffusion takes place. For example rendering with and then specifying will produce a 200dpi image.

(path to an ICC profile)

If this option set then the page will be color transformed using that profile after downscaling.

This is useful when the file uses overprint to separately paint to some subset of the C, M, Y, and K colorants, but the final CMYK is to be color corrected for printing or display.

The TIFF device also provide this parameter:

defaults to false. When set to true the device will print (to stdout) the name of each ink used on the page, and the CMYK values which are equivalent to 100% of that ink. The values are 16-bits ranging from 0 to 32760.

The device (along with the and devices) can perform rudimentary automatic bitmap 'trapping' on the final rendered bitmap. This code is disabled by default; see the note below as to why.

Trapping is a process whereby the output is adjusted to minimise the visual impact of offsets between each printed plane. Typically this involves slightly extending abutting regions that are rendered in different inks. The intent of this is to avoid the unsightly gaps that might be otherwise be revealed in the final printout if the different color plates do not exactly line up.

This trapping is controlled by 3 device parameters. Firstly the maximum X and Y offsets are specified using and (where is a figure in pixels, before the downscaler is applied).

The final control is to inform the trapping process in what order inks should be processed, from darkest to lightest. For a typical CMYK device this order would be [ 3 1 0 2 ] (K darker than M darker than C darker than Y). This is the default. In the case where CMYK + spots are used, the code defaults to assuming that the spots are lighter than the standard colours and are sent darkest first (thus [ 3 1 0 2 4 5 6 ... ]).

To override these defaults, the parameter can be used, for example:

Trapping patents

Trapping is an technology area encumbered by many patents. We believe that the last of these has now lapsed, and so have enabled the code by default.

FAX

Ghostscript supports a variety of fax encodings, both encapsulated in (see above) and as raw files. The later case is described here.

The fax devices are , and .

The fax devices support the parameter as defined in the TIFF device section.

BMP

BMP is a simple uncompressed image format commonly used on MS Windows. It is supported by the devices .

PCX

PCX is an image format sometimes used on MS Windows. It has some support for image compression and alternate color spaces, and so can be a useful way to output CMYK. It is supported by the series of devices.

PSD

PSD is the image format used by Adobe Photoshop. It is supported by the , and devices. Of special interest with the and devices is that they support spot colors. See the comments under the and device about the maximum number of spot colors supported by Ghostscript

The and devices are essentially the same as the and devices except they provide 16 bit output.

The device produces PSD files with 6 components: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK, Orange, and Green. This device does not support the -dDownScaleFactor= option (see below), instead it always scales down by a factor of two.

These devices support the same -dDownScaleFactor= ratios as . The device supports the same trapping options as (but see this note).

NOTE: The PSD format is a single image per file format, so you must use the "%d" format for the "OutputFile" (or "-o") file name parameter (see One_page_per_file for details). An attempt to output multiple pages to a single PSD file (i.e. without the "%d" format) will result in an Postscript error.

PDF image output

These devices render input to a bitmap (or in the case of PCLm multiple bitmaps) then wraps the bitmap(s) up as the content of a PDF file. For PCLm there are some additional rules regarding headers, extra content and the order in which the content is written in the PDF file.

The aim is to support the PCLm mobile printing standard, and to permit production of PDF files from input where the graphics model differs significantly from PDF (eg PCL and RasterOPs).

There are four devices named pdfimage8, pdfimage24, pdfimage32 and PCLm. These produce valid PDF files with a colour depth of 8 (Gray), 24 (RGB) or 32 (CMYK), the PCLm device only supports 24-bit RGB. These are all implemented as 'downscale' devices, which means they can implement page level anti-aliasing using the switch.

integer

This causes the internal rendering to be scaled down by the given (integer <= 8) factor before being output. For example, the following will produce a PDF containing a 200dpi output from a 600dpi internal rendering:

The type of compression used for the image data can also be selected using the switch. Valid compression types are , , , and .Note that LZW is not supported on PCLm (not valid) and None is only supported on PCLm for debugging purposes.

Finally, the PCLm device supports the switch to set the vertical height of the strips of image content, as required by the specification.

For JPEG compression the devices support both the JPEGQ and QFactor switches as documented for the JPEG file format device.

In addition to raster image files, Ghostscript supports output in a number of 'high-level' formats. These allow Ghostscript to preserve (as much as possible) the drawing elements of the input file maintaining flexibility, resolution independence, and editability.

High-level devices

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) output

These devices render internally in 8 bit greyscale, and then feed the resultant image into an OCR engine. Currently, we are using the Tesseract engine. Not only is this both free and open source, it gives very good results, and supports a huge number of languages/scripts.

The Tesseract engine relies on files to encapsulate each language and/or script. These "traineddata" files are available in different forms, including fast and best variants. Alternatively, people can train their own data using the standard Tesseract tools.

These files are looked for from a variety of places. Firstly, any files placed in "Resource/Tesseract/" will be included in the binary for any standard (COMPILE_INITS=1) build. Secondly, files will be searched for in the current directory. Thirdly, files will be searched for in the directory given by the environment variable TESSDATA_PREFIX.

By default, the OCR process defaults to looking for English text, using "eng.traineddata". This can be changed by using the switch;

language

This sets the trained data sets to use within the Tesseract OCR engine. For example, the following will use English and Arabic:

The system is designed to allow different OCR engines to be used. Even with Tesseract, there are 2 different engines, the "legacy" engine, and the "LSTM" engine. These have different tradeoffs regarding speed, accuracy, sensitivity to different fonts, size of data etc. The engines in use can be changed by using the switch;

integer

This sets the engine to use for OCR. It is the callers responsibility to ensure that the traineddata supplied is appropriate for the selected engine.

0

Default engine.

1

LSTM engine only.

2

Tesseract "legacy" engine only.

3

Legacy and LSTM Engine combined.

The first device is named ocr. It extracts data as unicode codepoints and outputs them to the device as a stream of UTF-8 bytes.

The second device is named hocr. This extracts the data in hOCR format.

These devices are implemented as downscaling devices, so the standard parameters can be used to control this process. It may seem strange to use downscaling on an image that is not actually going to be output, but there are actually good reasons for this. Firstly, the higher the resolution, the slower the OCR process. Secondly, the way the Tesseract OCR engine works means that anti-aliased images perform broadly as well as the super-sampled image from which it came.

PDF image output (with OCR text)

These devices do the same render to bitmap and wrap as a PDF process as the PDFimage devices above, but with the addition of an OCR step at the end. The OCR'd text is overlaid "invisibly" over the images, so searching and cut/paste should still work.

The OCR engine being used is Tesseract. For information on this including how to control what language data is used, see the OCR devices section above.

There are three devices named pdfocr8, pdfocr24 and pdfocr32. These produce valid PDF files with a colour depth of 8 (Gray), 24 (RGB) or 32 (CMYK).

These devices accept all the same flags as the PDFimage devices described above.

PDF writer

The device outputs PDF.

PS2 writer

The device outputs postscript language level 2. It is recommnded that this device is used for PostScript output. There is no longer any support for creating PostScript level 1 output.

EPS writer

The device outputs encapsulated postscript.

PXL

The and devices output HP PCL-XL, a graphic language understood by many recent laser printers.

Text output

The txtwrite device will output the text contained in the original document as Unicode.

Please refer to VectorDevices.htm for documentation on the device options for these devices.

Display Devices

Ghostscript is often used for screen display of postscript and pdf documents. In many cases, a client or 'viewer' application calls the Ghostscript engine to do the rasterization and handles the display of the resulting image itself, but it is also possible to invoke Ghostscript directly and select an output device which directly handles displaying the image on screen.

This section describes the various display-oriented devices that are available in Ghostscript.

X Window System

Perhaps the most common use of of a display device is with the X Window System on unix-like systems. It is the default device on the command line client on such systems, and is used more creatively by the gv client application.

The available devices are:

x11

This is the default device, handling display on X11R6.

x11alpha

This is the device, but with antialiasing. It is equivalent to invoking the device with the options .

x11cmyk

This device rasterizes the image in the CMYK color space, then flattens it to RGB for display. It's intended for testing only.

x11mono

This is a strict black-and-white device for 1-bit monochrome displays.

x11gray2

This is a device for 2 bpp (4-level) monochrome displays.

x11gray4

This is a device for 4 bpp (16-level) monochrome displays.

On Mac OS X as of 10.6, the X server (XQuartz) only supports color depth 15 and 24. Depth 15 isn't well-tested, and it may be desirable, for serious use, to switch to depth 24 with:

display device (MS Windows, OS/2, gtk+)

The device is used by the MS Windows, OS/2 and the gtk+ versions of ghostscript.

Options

The display device has several user settable options.

N (integer bit-field)

Some common values are 16#30804 for Windows RGB, 16#804 for gtk+ RGB, 16#20101 for Windows monochrome, 16#102 for gtk+ monochrome, 16#20802 grayscale, 16#20808 for CMYK, 16#a0800 for separations.

The bit fields are

• native (1), gray (2), RGB (4), CMYK (8), or separation (80000) color spaces.
• unused first byte (40) or last byte (80).
• 1 (100), 4 (400), or 8 (800) bits/component.
• bigendian (00000 = RGB) or littleendian (10000 = BGR) order.
• top first (20000) or bottom first (00000) raster.
• 16 bits/pixel with 555 (00000) or 565 (40000) bitfields.

For more details, see the Ghostscript Interpreter API.

DPI

Set the initial resolution resolution for the display device. This is used by the Windows clients to set the display device resolution to the Windows display logical resolution. This can be overriden by the command line option .

When using the separation color space, the following options may be set using setpagedevice, as described in the PostScript Language Reference:

An array giving the names of the spot colors

An array giving the names and order of the colorants to be output.

IJS - Inkjet and other raster devices

IJS is a relatively new initiative to improve the quality and ease of use of inkjet printing with Ghostscript. Using IJS, you can add new drivers, or upgrade existing ones, without recompiling Ghostscript. All driver authors are encouraged to adapt their drivers for IJS, and if there is an IJS driver available for your printer, it should be your first choice.

Please see the IJS web page for more information about IJS, including a listing of IJS-compatible drivers.

A typical command line for IJS is:

Individual IJS command line parameters are as follows:

{path}

Sets the pathname for the IJS server (ie printer driver). Ghostscript will spawn a new process for this driver, and communicate with it using the IJS protocol. The pathname need not be absolute, as the PATH environment variable is searched, but it's probably a good idea for robustness and security. Note also that if -dSAFER is not specified, it's possible for PostScript code to set this parameter, so it can cause arbitrary code to be executed. See the section on Security for more information.

{name}

{name}

These parameters select the device according to IEEE-1284 standard device ID strings. In general, consult the documentation for the driver to find the appropriate settings. Note that, if the value contains a space, you'll want to quote the value in your shell, as in the example above.

{params}

This parameter allows you to set arbitrary IJS parameters on the IJS driver. The format is a comma-separated list of pairs. If it is necessary to send a value containing a comma or backslash, it can be escaped with a backslash. Thus, sets the parameter Foo to "bar", and Baz to "a,b".

This flag indicates that Ghostscript should open the output file and pass a file descriptor to the server. If not set, Ghostscript simply passes the filename set in OutputFile to the server. In most cases, this flag won't matter, but if you have a driver which works only with OutputFD (such as hpijs 1.0.2), or if you're using the -sOutputFile="|cmd" syntax, you'll need to set it.

N

This parameter controls the number of bits per sample. The default value of 8 should be appropriate for most work. For monochrome images, use -dBitsPerSample=1.

Generic Ghostscript options that are particularly relevant for IJS are summarized below:

number

number1number2

Sets the resolution, in dpi. If the resolution is not specified, Ghostscript queries the IJS server to determine the preferred resolution. When the resolution is specified, it overrides the value (if any) preferred by the IJS server.

These flags enable duplex (two-sided) printing. Tumble controls the orientation. When Tumble is false, the pages are oriented suitably at the left or right. When Tumble is true, the pages are oriented suitably for binding at the top or bottom.

{name}

Use this flag to select the process color model. Suitable values include DeviceGray, DeviceRGB, and DeviceCMYK.

Building IJS

IJS is included by default on Unix gcc builds, and also in autoconf'ed builds. Others may need some makefile tweaking. First, make sure the IJS device is selected:

DEVICE_DEVS2=$(DD)ijs.dev

Next, make sure that the path and execution type are set in the top level makefile. The values for Unix are as follows:

IJSSRCDIR=ijs IJSEXECTYPE=unix

At present, "unix" and "win" are the only supported values for IJSEXECTYPE. If neither sounds appropriate for your system, it's possible that more porting work is needed.

Last, make sure that ijs.mak is included in the top level makefile. It should be present right after the include of icclib.mak.

IJS is not inherently platform-specific. We're very much interested in taking patches from people who have ported it to non-mainstream platforms. And once it's built, you won't have to recompile Ghostscript to support new drivers!

Rinkj - Resplendent inkjet driver

The Rinkj driver is an experimental new driver, capable of driving some Epson printers at a very high level of quality. It is not currently recommended for the faint of heart.

You will need to add the following line to your makefile:

DEVICE_DEVS2=$(DD)rinkj.dev

Most of the configuration parameters, including resolution, choice of printer model, and linearization curves, are in a separate setup file. In addition, we rely heavily on an ICC profile for mapping document colors to actual device colors.

A typical command line invocation is:

Individual Rinkj command line parameters are as follows:

{path}

Specifies the path for the setup file.

{path}

Specifies the path for the output ICC profile. This profile should be a link profile, mapping the ProcessColorModel (DeviceCMYK by default) to the device color space.

For 6- and 7-color devices, the target color space for the output profile is currently a 4-component space. The conversion from this into the 6- or 7-color space (the "ink split") is done by lookup tables in the setup file.

Setup files are in a simple "Key: value" text format. Relevant keys are:

{name}

{name}

The manufacturer and model of the individual device, using the same syntax as IEEE printer identification strings. Currently, the only supported manufacturer string is "EPSON", and the only supported model strings are "Stylus Photo 2200" and "Stylus Photo 7600".

{x-dpi}x{y-dpi}

The resolution in dpi. Usually, this should match the Ghostscript resolution set with the switch. Otherwise, the page image will be scaled.

{int}

Selects among variant dither options. Currently, the choices are for one-bit dither, and , for a 2-bit variable dot dither.

{int}

Controls the aspect ratio for highlight dot placement. Valid values are , , and . For best results, choose a value near the x resolution divided by the y resolution. For example, if resolution is 1440x720, aspect should be 2.

{int}

Chooses a microdot size. On EPSON devices, this value is passed directly through to the "ESC ( e" command. See EPSON documentation for further details (see, I told you this wasn't for the faint of heart).

{int}

Enables (1) or disables (0) unidirectional printing, which is slower but possibly higher quality.

{plane}

Adds a linearization look-up table. The plane is one of "CcMmYKk". The lookup table data follows. The line immediately following AddLut is the number of data points. Then, for each data point is a line consisting of two space-separated floats - the output value and the input value. If more than one LUT is specified for a single plane, they are applied in sequence.

A typical setup file is supplied in . It is configured for the 2200, but can be adapted to the 7600 just by changing the "Model" line.

A known issue with this driver is poor support for margins and page size. In some cases, this will cause an additional page to be ejected at the end of a job. You may be able to work around this by supplying a cut-down value for , for example 755 for an 8.5x11 inch page on the EPSON 2200.

HP Deskjet official drivers

HP provides official drivers for many of their Deskjet printer models. In order to use these drivers, you will need the HP Inkjet Server as well as Ghostscript, available from http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net. This version of Ghostscript includes the patch from version 0.97 of the hpijs software. If you are installing hpijs from an RPM, you will only need the hpijs RPM, not the Ghostscript-hpijs one, as the code needed to work with hpijs is already included.

Note that newer version of the hpijs drivers support the IJS protocol. If you can, you should consider using the ijs driver instead. Among other things, the hpijs Ghostscript driver is Unix-only, and is untested on older Unix platforms.

As of the 0.97 version, hpijs supports the following printer models:

e-Series:

e-20

DeskJet 350C Series:

350C

DeskJet 600C Series:

600C, 660C, 670/672C, 670TV, 680/682C

DeskJet 600C Series Photo:

610/612C, 640/648C, 690/692/693/694/695/697C

DeskJet 630C Series:

630/632C

DeskJet 800C Series:

810/812C, 830/832C, 840/842/843C, 880/882C, 895C

DeskJet 900C Series, PhotoSmart::

930/932C, 950/952C, 970C, PhotoSmart 1000/1100

DeskJet 990C, PhotoSmart:

960C, 980C, 990C, PhotoSmart 1215/1218

You will need to add the following line to your makefile:

DEVICE_DEVS2=$(DD)DJ630.dev $(DD)DJ6xx.dev $(DD)DJ6xxP.dev $(DD)DJ8xx.dev $(DD)DJ9xx.dev $(DD)DJ9xxVIP.dev $(DD)AP21xx.dev

Please see http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net for more information about this driver. Thanks to the folks at HP, especially David Suffield for making this driver available and working to integrate it with Ghostscript.

Gimp-Print driver collection

The Gimp-Print project provides a large collection of printer drivers with an IJS interface. Please see their website for details.

MS Windows printers

This section was written by Russell Lang, the author of Ghostscript's MS Windows-specific printer driver, and updated by Pierre Arnaud, the current maintainer.

The device uses MS Windows printer drivers, and thus should work with any printer with device-independent bitmap (DIB) raster capabilities. The printer resolution cannot be selected directly using PostScript commands from Ghostscript: use the printer setup in the Control Panel instead. It is however possible to specify a maximum resolution for the printed document (see below).

If no Windows printer name is specified in , Ghostscript prompts for a Windows printer using the standard Print Setup dialog box. You must set the orientation to Portrait and the page size to that expected by Ghostscript; otherwise the image will be clipped. Ghostscript sets the physical device size to that of the Windows printer driver, but it does not update the PostScript clipping path.

If a Windows printer name is specified in using the format , for instance

then Ghostscript attempts to open the Windows printer without prompting (except, of course, if the printer is connected to ). Ghostscript attempts to set the Windows printer page size and orientation to match that expected by Ghostscript, but doesn't always succeed. It uses this algorithm:

1. If the requested page size matches one of the Windows standard page sizes +/- 2mm, request that standard size.
2. Otherwise if the requested page size matches one of the Windows standard page sizes in landscape mode, ask for that standard size in landscape.
3. Otherwise ask for the page size by specifying only its dimensions.
4. Merge the requests above with the defaults. If the printer driver ignores the requested paper size, no error is generated: it will print on the wrong paper size.
5. Open the Windows printer with the merged orientation and size.

The Ghostscript physical device size is updated to match the Windows printer physical device.

Supported command-line parameters

The device supports a limited number of command-line parameters (e.g. it does not support setting the printer resolution). The recognized parameters are the following:

Selects the MS Windows printer device. If Ghostscript was not compiled with this device as the default output device, you have to specify it on the command line.

Hides the progress dialog, which shows the percent of the document page already processed and also provides a cancel button. This option is useful if GS is intended to print pages in the background, without any user intervention.

"%printer%printer_name"

Specifies which printer should be used. The printer_name should be typed exactly as it appears in the Printers control panel, including spaces.

Supported options (device properties)

Several extra options exist which cannot be set through the command-line, but only by executing the appropriate PostScript setup code. These options can be set through the inclusion of a setup file on the command-line:

The file is responsible for the device selection, therefore you should not specify the option on the command-line if you are using such a setup file. Here is an example of such a setup file:

mark /NoCancel true % don't show the cancel dialog /BitsPerPixel 4 % force 4 bits/pixel /UserSettings << /DocumentName (Ghostscript document) % name for the Windows spooler /MaxResolution 360 % maximum document resolution >> (mswinpr2) finddevice % select the Windows device driver putdeviceprops setdevice

This example disables the progress dialog (same as the option), forces a 4 bits/pixel output resolution and specifies additional user settings, such as the document name (which will be displayed by the Windows spooler for the queued document) and the maximum resolution (here 360 dpi). It then finds and selects an instance of the MS Windows device printer and activates it. This will show the standard printer dialog, since no property was specified.

The following options are available:

Disables (hides) the progress dialog when set to or show the progress dialog if not set or set to .

Specifies which printer should be used. The string should be of the form , where the printer_name should be typed exactly as it appears in the Printers control panel, including spaces.

Shows the standard printer dialog ( or any other value), shows the printer setup dialog () or selects the default Windows printer without any user interaction ().

Sets the device depth to the specified bits per pixel. Currently supported values are (monochrome), (CMYK with screening handled by Ghostscript) and (True Color, dithering handled by the Windows printer driver; this option can produce huge print jobs).

Sets additional options, defined in a dictionary. The following properties can be set:

Defines the user friendly document name which will be displayed by the Windows spooler.

Defines the range of pages contained in the document. This information can be used by the printer dialog, in conjunction with the following property.

Defines the selected range of pages. This information will be displayed in the printer dialog and will be updated after the user interaction. A PostScript program could check these values and print only the selected page range.

Specifies the maximum tolerated output resolution. If the selected printer has a higher resolution than , then Ghostscript will render the document with a submultiple of the printer resolution. For example, if is set to 360 and the output printer supports up to 1200 dpi, then Ghostscript renders the document with an internal resolution of 1200/4=300 dpi. This can be very useful to reduce the memory requirements when printing in True Color on some high resolution ink-jet color printers.

These properties can be queried through the operator. The following PostScript code snippet shows how to do it for some of the properties:

currentpagedevice /BitsPerPixel get == % displays the selected depth currentpagedevice /UserSettings get % get the additional options.. /us exch def % ..and assign them to a variable us /DocumentName get == % displays the document name us /SelectedRange get == % displays the selected page range % other misc. information (don't rely on them) us /Color get == % 1 => monochrome output, 2 => color output us /PrintCopies get == % displays the number of copies requested

There are a few undocumented parameters stored in the dictionary. You should not rely on them. Their use is still experimental and they could be removed in a future version.

Duplex printing

If the Windows printer supports the duplex printing feature, then it will also be available through the device. You can query for this support through the property of the . If it returns , then the feature is not supported by the selected printer. Otherwise, means that the printer is currently set up to print on both faces of the paper and that it is not, but that it can.

The following example shows how to print on both faces of the paper (using the long side of the paper as the reference):

<< /Duplex true /Tumble false >> setpagedevice

Sun SPARCprinter

This section was contributed by Martin Schulte.

With a SPARCprinter you always buy software that enables you to do PostScript printing on it. A page image is composed on the host, which sends a bitmap to the SPARCprinter through a special SBUS video interface. So the need for a Ghostscript interface to the SPARCPrinter seems low, but on the other hand, Sun's software prints some PostScript drawings incorrectly: some pages contain a thin vertical line of rubbish, and on some Mathematica drawings the text at the axes isn't rotated. Ghostscript, however, gives the correct results. Moreover, replacing proprietary software should never be a bad idea.

The problem is that there has yet been no effort to make the SPARCPrinter driver behave like a BSD output filter. I made my tests using the script shown here.

Installation

Add to and compile Ghostscript as described in the documentation on how to build Ghostscript. Afterwards you can use the following script as an example for printing after modifying it with the right pathnames -- including for {GSPATH} the full pathname of the Ghostscript executable:

outcmd1='/vol/local/lib/troff2/psxlate -r' outcmd2='{GSPATH} -sDEVICE=sparc -sOUTPUTFILE=/dev/lpvi0 -' if [ $# -eq 0 ] then $outcmd1 | $outcmd2 else cat $* | $outcmd1 | $outcmd2 fi

Problems

Since can be opened only for exclusive use, if another job has it open (engine_ctl_sparc or another Ghostscript are the most likely candidates), Ghostscript stops with "Error: /invalidfileaccess in --.outputpage--"

In case of common printer problems like being out of paper, a warning describing the reason is printed to stdout. The driver tries access again each five seconds. Due to a problem with the device driver (in the kernel) the reason for printer failure isn't always reported correctly to the program. This is the case, for instance, if you open the top cover (error E5 on the printer's display). Look at the display on the printer itself if a "Printer problem with unknown reason" is reported. Fatal errors cause the print job to be terminated.

Note: there is some confusion whether the resolution setting should be the integers 300 and 400, or the symbolic constants DPI300 and DPI400 (defined in lpviio.h). Ghostscript releases have had it both ways. It is currently the latter. However, INOUE Namihiko reports (in bug #215256) that the former works better for him. If anyone has a definitive answer, please let us know.

Apple dot matrix printer

This section was contributed by Mark Wedel <master@cats.ucsc.edu>.

The Apple Dot Matrix Printer (DMP) was a parallel predecessor to the Imagewriter printer. As far as I know, Imagewriter commands are a superset of the Dot Matrix printer's, so the driver should generate output that can be printed on Imagewriters.

To print images, the driver sets the printer for unidirectional printing and 15 characters per inch (cpi), or 120dpi. It sets the line feed to 1/9 inch. When finished, it sets the printer to bidirectional printing, 1/8-inch line feeds, and 12 cpi. There appears to be no way to reset the printer to initial values.

This code does not set for 8-bit characters (which is required). It also assumes that carriage return-newline is needed, and not just carriage return. These are all switch settings on the DMP, and I have configured them for 8-bit data and carriage return exclusively. Ensure that the Unix printer daemon handles 8-bit (binary) data properly; in my SunOS 4.1.1 file the string "" works fine for this.

Finally, you can search for "" and "" to find the strings that initialize the printer and reset things when finished, and change them to meet your needs.

Special and Test devices

The devices in this section are intended primarily for testing. They may be interesting as code examples, as well.

Raw 'bit' devices

There are a collection of 'bit' devices that don't do any special formatting but output 'raw' binary data for the page images. These are used for benchmarking but can also be useful when you want to directly access the raster data.

The raw devices are .

Bounding box output

There is a special "device" that just prints the bounding box of each page. You select it in the usual way:

It prints the output in a format like this:

Currently, it always prints the bounding box on ; eventually, it should also recognize .

By default, white objects don't contribute to the bounding box because many files fill the whole page with white before drawing other objects. This can be changed by:

Note that this device, like other devices, has a resolution and a (maximum) page size. As for other devices, the product (resolution x page size) is limited to approximately 500K pixels. By default, the resolution is 4000 DPI and the maximum page size is approximately 125", or approximately 9000 default (1/72") user coordinate units. If you need to measure larger pages than this, you must reset both the resolution and the page size in pixels, e.g.,

Ink coverage output

There are two special devices that print the ink coverage of each page; the inkcov device and the ink_cov device. They are selected like this:

These commands also work as expected:

The devices print their output in a format like this:

The difference between the two devices is that the inkcov device considers each rendered pixel and whether it marks the C, M, Y or K channels. So the percentages are a measure of how many device pixels contain that ink. The ink_cov device gives the more traditional use of ink coverage, it also considers the amount of each colourant at each rendered pixel, so the percentages in this case are what percentage of the ink is used on the page.

As an example, If we take a page which is covered by a pure 100% cyan fill both devices would give the same result 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00; each pixel is marked by the cyan ink and each pixel contains 100% cyan. If however we use a 50% cyan fill the inkcov device will still give 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 as 100% of the pixels contain cyan. The ink_cov device, however, would give a result of 0.50 0.00 0.00 0.00.

Permutation (DeviceN color model)

With no additional parameters, the device named "permute" looks to Ghostscript like a standard CMYK contone device, and outputs a PPM file, using a simple CMYK->RGB transform. This should be the baseline for regression testing.

With the addition of , the internal behavior changes somewhat, but in most cases the resulting rendered file should be the same. In this mode, the color model becomes "DeviceN" rather than "DeviceCMYK", the number of components goes to six, and the color model is considered to be the (yellow, cyan, cyan, magenta, 0, black) tuple. This is what's rendered into the memory buffer. Finally, on conversion to RGB for output, the colors are permuted back.

As such, this code should check that all imaging code paths are 64-bit clean. Additionally, it should find incorrect code that assumes that the color model is one of DeviceGray, DeviceRGB, or DeviceCMYK.

Currently, the code has the limitation of 8-bit continuous tone rendering only. An enhancement to do halftones is planned as well. Note, however, that when testing permuted halftones for consistency, it is important to permute the planes of the default halftone accordingly, and that any file which sets halftones explicitly will fail a consistency check.

spotcmyk (DeviceN color model)

The device was created for debugging and testing of the DeviceN extensions to Ghostscript that were released in version 8.0. There are also another device () in the same source file. It were created for testing however it are not actually useful except as example code.

The device was also designed to provide example code for a device which supports spot colors. Spot colors need to be specified prior to opening the first page. This can be done via adding the following to the command line: .

The device produces a binary data file (similar to the bitcmyk device) for the CMYK data. This data file has the name specified by the "OutputFile" parameter. The device also produces a binary data file (similar to the bitmono device) for each spot color plane. These data files have the name specified by the "OutputFile" parameter with "sn" appended to the end (where "n" is the spot color number 0 to 12)".

After the device produces the binary data files, the files are read and PCX format versions of these files are created with ".pcx" appended to the binary source file name.

If the the is being used with three spot colors and the "OutputFile" parameter is then the following files would be created by the device:

xxx - binary CMYK data xxxs0 - binary data for first spot color xxxs1 - binary data for second spot color xxxs2 - binary data for third spot color xxx.pcx - CMYK data in PCX format xxxs0.pcx - first spot color in PCX format xxxs1.pcx - second spot color in PCX format xxxs2.pcx - third spot color in PCX format

The device has the creation of the binary data files separated from the creation of the PCX files since the source file is intended as example code and many people may not be interested in the PCX format. The PCX format was chosen because it was simple to implement from preexisting code and viewers are available. The PCX format does have the disadvantage that most of those viewers are on Windows.

XCF (DeviceN color model)

The XCF file format is the native image format for the GIMP program. This format is currently supported by two devices: and .

We have been warned by the people supporting the GIMP program that they reserve the right to change the XCF format at anytime and thus these devices may become invalid. They are being included in the documentation because we have received some questions about these devices do.

The XCF devices were created for testing of the DeviceN extensions to Ghostscript which were released in version 8.0.

The device uses a DeviceRGB process color model and creates a normal XCF file.

The device was created as a means of viewing spot colors for those users that do not have access to either Photoshop (see the PSD devices) or a PCX viewer (see the device).

The device starts by using a DeviceCMYK process color model. The DeviceCMYK process color model allows the device to also support spot colors. Spot colors need to be specified prior to opening the first page. This can be done via adding the following to the command line: .

After a page is complete, the converts the CMYK image data into RGB for storing in the XCF output file. The XCF format does not currently support CMYK data directly. The spot color planes are converted into alpha channel planes. This is done because the XCF format does not currently support spot colors.

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This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of that license. Refer to licensing information at https://www.artifex.com or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 1305 Grant Avenue - Suite 200, Novato, CA 94945, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861, for further information.

Ghostscript version 9.53.0, 10 September 2020