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Copyright (C) 1989, 1995, 1996, 1997 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved. This file is part of Aladdin Ghostscript. Aladdin Ghostscript is distributed with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. No author or distributor accepts any responsibility for the consequences of using it, or for whether it serves any particular purpose or works at all, unless he or she says so in writing. Refer to the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License (the "License") for full details. Every copy of Aladdin Ghostscript must include a copy of the License, normally in a plain ASCII text file named PUBLIC. The License grants you the right to copy, modify and redistribute Aladdin Ghostscript, but only under certain conditions described in the License. Among other things, the License requires that the copyright notice and this notice be preserved on all copies. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This file, use.txt, describes how to use the Ghostscript language interpreter. For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see README. ******** ******** Installing Ghostscript ******** Please read the documentation file install.txt for information on installing Ghostscript. ******** ******** Unix shell scripts for Ghostscript ******** The Ghostscript distribution includes several Unix shell scripts for driving Ghostscript in different environments. These are all user-contributed code: please contact the user identified in the file, not Aladdin Enterprises, if you have questions. > pv.sh - preview a specified page of a dvi file in an X window. > sysvlp.sh - System V 3.2 lp interface for parallel printer. > pj-gs.sh - printing on an H-P PaintJet under HP-UX. > unix-lpr.sh - queue filter for lpr under Unix. > lprsetup.sh - setup for unix-lpr.sh. If one of these serves your needs, you may be able to skip most of the rest of this document. ******** ******** How to use Ghostscript ******** ******** The command (that is, a shell command in environments other than MS Windows, or a 'Run' line in MS Windows) to invoke Ghostscript is: gs <filename1> ... <filenameN> Normally the files are PostScript or EPS files, but depending on how Ghostscript was built, they may also be PDF files or MS-DOS EPSF files. The interpreter will read in the files in sequence (using the method described under "File searching" below to find the files) and execute them. After doing this, it reads further input from the primary input stream (normally the keyboard), consisting of PostScript language commands. Each line (i.e. characters up to a <return>) is interpreted separately. To exit from the interpreter, type quit<return>. The interpreter also exits gracefully if it encounters end-of-file. Typing the interrupt character, e.g., control-C, is also safe. The interpreter recognizes many switches described below, which may appear anywhere in the command line and apply to all files thereafter. Many of the switches include an '=' followed by a parameter. Because of a strange design decision in the Watcom C/C++ run-time library, you must use '#' rather than '=' with Ghostscript if Ghostscript was compiled with Watcom C/C++. In particular, the MS-DOS executable included in the standard Ghostscript distribution (gs386.exe) was compiled this way. You can get a brief help message by invoking Ghostscript with gs -h or gs -? This message also lists the available devices. For a little more information about available devices, a one-line description of each device appears near the beginning of the file devs.mak. Choosing the output device -------------------------- Ghostscript may be built with multiple output devices. Ghostscript normally opens the first one and directs output to it. To use device xyz as the initial output device, include the switch -sDEVICE=xyz in the command line. Note that this switch must precede the first .ps file, and only its first invocation has any effect. For example, for printer output in a normal configuration that includes an Epson printer driver, you might use the shell command gs -sDEVICE=epson myfile.ps instead of just gs myfile.ps Alternatively, once you are inside Ghostscript, you can type (epson) selectdevice (myfile.ps) run All output then goes to the printer instead of the display until further notice. You can switch devices at any time by using the selectdevice procedure, e.g., (vga) selectdevice or (epson) selectdevice As yet a third alternative, you can define an environment variable GS_DEVICE as the desired default device name. The order of precedence for these alternatives, highest to lowest, is: selectdevice (command line) GS_DEVICE (first device in build list) To select the resolution on a printer, use the shell command gs -sDEVICE=<device> -r<xres>x<yres> For example, on a 9-pin Epson-compatible printer, you can get the lowest-resolution (fastest) mode with gs -sDEVICE=epson -r60x72 and the highest-resolution mode with gs -sDEVICE=epson -r240x72. On a 24-pin printer, the lowest resolution is gs -sDEVICE=epson -r60x60 and the highest-resolution 24-pin mode is gs -sDEVICE=epson -r360x180 If you select a printer as the output device, Ghostscript also allows you to control where the device sends its output. Normally, output goes directly to the printer (PRN) on MS-DOS systems, and to a scratch file on Unix or VMS systems. To send the output to a series of files foo1.xyz, foo2.xyz, ..., use the switch -sOutputFile=foo%d.xyz (For compatibility with older versions of Ghostscript, -sOUTPUTFILE= also works.) The %d is a printf format specification; you can use other formats like %02d. Each file will receive one page of output. Alternatively, to send the output to a single file foo.xyz, with all the pages concatenated, use the switch -sOutputFile=foo.xyz On Unix systems, you can send the output directly to a pipe. For example, to pipe the output to the command `lpr' (which, on many Unix systems, is the command that spools output for a printer), use the switch -sOutputFile=\|lpr You can also send output to stdout for piping with the switch -sOutputFile=- In this case you must also use the -q switch, to prevent Ghostscript from writing messages to stdout. File formats like PCX and PBM are also 'devices'. When you select a file format as the 'device', you must also specify an output file, e.g., gs -sDEVICE=pcxmono -sOutputFile=xyz.pcx To find out what devices are available, type devicenames == after starting up Ghostscript. Alternatively you can use the -h or -? switch in the command line, as described above. Choosing paper size ------------------- Ghostscript is normally configured to use U.S. letter paper as the default. To select a different default paper size, find the line in gs_init.ps that says % Optionally choose a default paper size other than U.S. letter. The next line begins % (a4) To select A4 as the default paper size, remove the % but do not change anything else. To select a different default paper size, remove the % and replace the word a4 with the name of the desired paper size. You can use any paper size listed in the table at the beginning of gs_statd.ps. Alternatively, to select a different default paper size for a single invocation of Ghostscript, you can use the command line switch -sPAPERSIZE=a_known_paper_size e.g., -sPAPERSIZE=a4 or -sPAPERSIZE=legal Individual documents also can (and often do) specify a paper size, which will take precedence over the default one. If you want to force a specific paper size, ignoring the paper size specified in the document, make that paper size the default (as just described), and also include -dFIXEDMEDIA on the command line. Finally, most (but not all) of Ghostscript's printer drivers can be configured at compile time to use A4 paper as the default by including -DA4 in the CFLAGS switches in the makefile. See make.txt for more details. File searching -------------- When looking for initialization files (gs_*.ps, pdf_*.ps), font files, the Fontmap file, and files named on the command line, Ghostscript first tests whether the file name specifies an explicit directory. The test is as follows: - On Unix systems, Ghostscript tests whether the name begins with '/', or with one or more '.'s followed by a '/'. - On MS-DOS or MS Windows systems, Ghostscript tests whether the name has a ':' as its second character, or begins with '/' or '\', or with one or more '.'s followed by a '/' or '\'. - On VMS systems, Ghostscript tests whether the name contains a node, device, root, or directory specification. If the file name does specify an explicit directory (the test succeeds), Ghostscript simply tries to open the file using the given name. Otherwise, Ghostscript will try directories in the following order: - The current directory (unless disabled by the -P- switch); - The directory/ies specified by the -I switch(es) in the command line (see below), if any; - The directory/ies specified by the GS_LIB environment variable, if any; - The directory/ies specified by the GS_LIB_DEFAULT macro in the Ghostscript makefile, if any. Each of these (GS_LIB_DEFAULT, GS_LIB, and -I parameter) may be either a single directory, or a list of directories separated by a character appropriate for the operating system (':' on Unix systems, ';' on VMS systems, ';' on MS-DOS systems). We think that trying the current directory first is a very bad idea -- it opens serious security loopholes and can lead to very confusing errors if one has more than one version of Ghostscript in one's environment -- but when we attempted to change it, users insisted that we change it back. You can disable looking in the current directory first using the -P- switch described below. Note that Ghostscript does not use this file searching algorithm for the 'run' or 'file' operators: for these operators, it simply opens the file with the given name. To run a file using the searching algorithm, use 'runlibfile' instead of 'run'. Resources --------- Ghostscript uses a completely different rule for looking for files containing PostScript Level 2 "resources": per the Adobe documentation, it concatenates together: - The value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir (initially "/Resource/"); - The name of the resource category (e.g., ProcSet); - The value of the system parameter GenericResourcePathSep (initially "/"); - The name of the resource instance (e.g., CIDInit). For looking up fonts, after exhausting the search method described in the next section, it concatenates together: - The value of the system parameter FontResourceDir (initially "/Resource/Font/"); - The name of the resource font (e.g., Times-Roman). Note that even though the system parameters are named somethingDir, they are not just plain directory names: they have a "/" on the end, so that they can be concatenated with the category name or font name. Font lookup ----------- Ghostscript has a slightly different rule for determining how to find the file containing a font with a given name. This rule uses not only the search path defined by -I, GS_LIB, and GS_LIB_DEFAULT as described above, but an additional list of directories which is the value of the GS_FONTPATH environment variable (or the value provided with the -sFONTPATH= switch, if present). When Ghostscript needs to find a font that isn't already loaded into memory, it starts by looking for Fontmap files in every directory on the search path: these files provide mappings between font names and file names. (See the Fontmap file in the Ghostscript distribution for details.) If it can't find a font in any Fontmap file in the search path (or in the list provided with the -sFONTMAP= switch, if present), it looks at the GS_FONTPATH environment variable (or the value provided with the -sFONTPATH= switch, if present), which is also a list of directories. It goes to those directories, one by one, and looks for all files that appear to contain PostScript fonts; it then effectively adds all those files and fonts to its internal copy of the Fontmap (the catalog of fonts and the files that contain them). To summarize, the differences between the search path (-I, GS_LIB, GS_LIB_DEFAULT) and the font path (-sFONTPATH=, GS_FONTPATH) are: Search path: - Consulted first. - Font name -> file name mapping given in Fontmap files; aliases are possible, and there need not be any relation between the font name in the Fontmap and the FontName in the file. - Only fonts and files named in Fontmap are used. Font path: - Consulted only if search path doesn't provide the file. - Font name -> file name mapping is implicit -- the FontName in the file is used. Aliases are not possible. - Every Type 1 font file in each directory is available. If you are using one of the following types of computer, you may wish to set GS_FONTPATH to the indicated value so that Ghostscript will automatically acquire all the installed Type 1 fonts: System type GS_FONTPATH ----------- ----------- DEC OSF/1 /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1Adobe DEC Ultrix /usr/lib/DPS/outline/decwin HP-UX 9 /usr/lib/X11/fonts/type1.st/typefaces IBM AIX /usr/lpp/DPS/fonts/outlines " /usr/lpp/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Type1 " /usr/lpp/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/DPS NeXT /NextLibrary/Fonts/outline SGI IRIX /usr/lib/DPS/outline/base " /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1 Sun SunOS 4.x /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/outline " (NeWSprint only) newsprint_2.5/SUNWsteNP/reloc/$BASEDIR/NeWSprint/small_openwin/lib/fonts Sun Solaris 2 /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/outline VMS SYS$COMMON:[SYSFONT.XDPS.OUTLINE] These paths may not be exactly right for your installation; if the indicated directory doesn't contain files whose names are familiar font names like Courier and Helvetica, you may wish to ask your system administrator where to find these fonts. Adobe Acrobat comes with a set of 14 Type 1 fonts, typically in a directory called some_path_name_or_other/Acrobat3/Fonts. There is no particular reason to use these instead of the corresponding fonts in the Ghostscript distribution, aside from saving about 1 Mb of disk space, but if you want to do this, see install.txt. NOTE: On Solaris systems simply setting GS_FONTPATH may not work, because for some reason some versions of Ghostscript can't seem to find any of the Type1 fonts in /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/outline. It says: "15 files, 15 scanned, 0 new fonts". See Fontmap.Sol instead. Temporary files --------------- By default, Ghostscript creates temporary files named _temp_XX.XXX in the current directory on MS-DOS and VMS systems, gsXXXXXX in the current directory on OS/2 systems, and gs_XXXXX in the /tmp directory on Unix systems. You can change the directory in which Ghostscript will create these files by setting the TEMP environment variable to the name of the directory. Ghostscript currently doesn't do a very good job of deleting temporary files when it exits; you may have to delete them manually from time to time. Environment variable summary ---------------------------- GS_DEVICE Defines the default output device. Described above. GS_FONTPATH Specifies a list of directories that should be scanned for fonts if a requested font can't be found anywhere on the search path. Described above. GS_LIB Provides a search path for initialization files and fonts. Described above. GS_OPTIONS Defines a list of command line arguments to be processed before the ones actually specified on the command line. For example, setting GS_DEVICE to xxx is equivalent to setting GS_OPTIONS to -sDEVICE=xxx. The contents of GS_OPTIONS are not limited to switches; they may include actual file names or even @file arguments. TEMP Defines a directory name for temporary files. Described above. ******** ******** Using Ghostscript and Ghostview with PDF files ******** Ghostscript is normally configured (except on 16-bit MS-DOS platforms) so that it can interpret both PostScript and PDF files (the latter are sometimes incorrectly called "Acrobat files"). It examines each file to determine automatically whether it is a PDF file or a PostScript file. All the normal switches and procedures for interpreting PostScript files also apply to PDF files, with a few exceptions noted below. In addition, there is a shell script / batch file pdf2ps input.pdf output.ps that converts PDF to (Level 2) PostScript. Switches not applicable to PDF files ------------------------------------ You cannot use the `-' switch to provide PDF input from stdin or a pipe. The PDF language, unlike the PostScript language, inherently requires random access to the file. Added switches for PDF files ---------------------------- -dFirstPage=pagenumber Starts interpreting on the given page of the document. -dLastPage=pagenumber Stops interpreting after the given page of the document. -sPSFile=filename Writes the PostScript equivalent of the PDF input on the given file. Ghostview and PDF files ----------------------- Since Ghostview pipes PostScript files to Ghostscript, you cannot view PDF files with Ghostview just by saying ghostview file.pdf Instead there are two options: 1. Tanmoy Bhattacharya has written some patches for Ghostview 1.5 that allow it to read and display PDF files. These are available from: ftp://gita.lanl.gov/people/tanmoy/hypertex/gv1.5gs3.33hack.tar.gz 2. Start Ghostview as follows: ghostview -arguments file.pdf quit.ps This will allow you to display a PDF file, but you won't be able to jump to particular pages. Use Tanmoy's code if you want that facility. ******** ******** Notes on specific platforms ******** ******** VMS --- On VMS systems, the last character of each "directory" name indicates what sort of entity the "directory" references. If the "directory" name ends with a colon, it is taken as referring to a logical device, e.g.: $ DEFINE GHOSTSCRIPT_DEVICE DUA1:[GHOSTSCRIPT_14] $ DEFINE GS_LIB GHOSTSCRIPT_DEVICE: If the "directory" name ends with a closing square bracket, it is taken as referring to a real directory, e.g.: $ DEFINE GS_LIB DUA1:[GHOSTSCRIPT] In order to specify switches and file names when invoking the interpreter, define GS as a foreign command: $ GS == "$disk:[directory]GS.EXE" where "disk" and "directory" specify the disk and directory where Ghostscript is located. For instance, $ GS == "$DUA1:[GHOSTSCRIPT]GS.EXE" To allow the interpreter to be run from any directory, define the logical GS_LIB which points to the Ghostscript directory $ DEFINE GS_LIB disk:[directory] This allows Ghostscript to locate its initialization files stored in the Ghostscript directory -- see use.txt for further details. Finally, to invoke the interpreter, merely type GS. Although DCL normally converts unquoted parameters to upper case, C programs receive their parameters in lower case. That is, the command $ GS -Isys$login: passes the switch "-isys$login" to the interpreter. To preserve the case of switches, enclose them in double quotes; e.g., $ GS "-Isys$login:" If you are on an X Windows display (for which gs is built), you can do $ set display/create/node="domain-name"/transport=tcpip For example, $ set display/create/node="doof.city.com"/transport=tcpip and then run Ghostscript $ gs If you write printer output to a file and then want to print the file later, use the "/PASSALL" qualifier to the PRINT command. In order to get PDF files (or PostScript files that use the setfileposition operator) to work properly on VMS systems, you must ensure that they are "stream LF" type files. (**NOTE**: This only applies if you are using DEC C to compile Ghostscript; there is no known way to get these files to work properly with the old VAX C compiler.) If you transfer files by FTP, you probably need to do one of the following two things after the transfer: 1. If FTP'd in text/ASCII mode then do: $ CONVERT/FDL=STREAMLF.FDL input-file output-file where the contents of the file STREAMLF.FDL are given below. 2. Otherwise, if FTP'd in binary mode do $ SET FILE/ATTRIBUTE=(RFM:STMLF) The contents of the STREAMLF.FDL file are shown between, and exclusive of, the dashed lines: ------------------------------------------------- FILE ORGANIZATION sequential RECORD BLOCK_SPAN yes CARRIAGE_CONTROL carriage_return FORMAT stream_lf ------------------------------------------------- MS-DOS ------ Ghostscript supports many SuperVGA displays directly, most of them with more than 16 colors. The complete list is in the file devs.mak, which is part of the Ghostscript source code. (If you got Ghostscript under the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License, the person or place from which you got it is also required to make the source code available to you; if you got it under the GNU License, see the GNU License for more information.) Some applications, such as Microsoft Word, require a prologue in front of the PostScript files they output. In the case of Word, this is one of the *.ini files included with the Word distribution. Other applications may require other prologues. These may be specified on the Ghostscript command line, e.g., gs prologue.ini myfile.ps If you have a SuperVGA display that supports a 16-color mode with 800x600 pixels, and you know the display mode number for this mode, you can select it by using the command line switches -sDEVICE=svga16 -dDisplayMode=NNN where NNN is the display mode number in decimal. The modes for some popular display chipsets are as follows: Acumos AVGA2, AVGA3 88 (0x58) Advance Logic AL2101 43 (0x2B) Ahead V5000 113 (0x71) ATI VGAWONDER, Graphics Ultra etc. 84 (0x54) Chips and Technologies 106 (0x6A) Cirrus Logic CL-GD 500/600 100 (0x64) Cirrus Logic GD 5422 88 (0x58) Compaq VGA 89 (0x59) CTI 106 (0x6A) * Genoa 5xxx, Sigma VGA 41 (0x29) Genoa 6xxx 106 (0x6A) MXIC MX 68010 85 (0x55) NCR 77C22 88 (0x58) OAK Technologies OTI-067, OTI-077, OTI037C 82 (0x52) OAK Technologies OTI037C w/ NEL BIOS 91 (0x5B) * Orchid Prodesigner 41 (0x29) Paradise 88 (0x58) Poach 106 (0x6A) Primus 42 (0x2A) Realtek RT 3106 31 (0x1F) Tecmar 22 (0x16) Trident 8900 91 (0x5B) * Tseng ET-3000, ET-4000 41 (0x29) * VEGA 41 (0x29) Video 7 SVGA 98 (0x62) WD90C11 92 (0x5C) Western Digital 88 (0x58) The ones marked * are the default (they all use the same value.) If your card's chipset doesn't appear on this list, or if you try the value here and it doesn't work, please e-mail the chipset and correct display mode to ghost@aladdin.com for inclusion in future releases. NOTE: The remainder of the MS-DOS section is currently not relevant, because the Borland compilers do not support 32-bit MS-DOS executables, and Ghostscript no longer supports the 16-bit MS-DOS environment. We have retained this section on the off-chance that Borland will support 32-bit MS-DOS compilation at some future time. If you are running Ghostscript on a MS-DOS machine with a display that is not EGA/VGA compatible, you must use the Borland compiler. You must build Ghostscript with the BGI driver as the default, and you will need the appropriate .BGI file from the Borland Turbo C library. (Ghostscript includes the EGA/VGA driver in the executable.) If you are using the BGI driver, two additional environment variables become relevant: BGIPATH - defines the directory where Ghostscript will look for the appropriate BGI driver. If BGIPATH is not defined, Ghostscript will look in the directory defined as BGIDIR in the makefile. In either case, if no driver is found in the designated directory, Ghostscript will look in the current directory. BGIUSER - a string of the form nn.dname, where nn is a hexadecimal number giving a display mode and dname is the name of a file containing a user-supplied BGI driver. If BGIUSER is defined and the BGI device is selected, Ghostscript will supply nn as the display mode and will obtain the driver from the file named dname. X Windows --------- Ghostscript looks for the following resources under the program name "ghostscript" and class name "Ghostscript": Name Class Default ---- ----- ------- background Background white foreground Foreground black borderColor BorderColor black borderWidth BorderWidth 1 geometry Geometry NULL xResolution Resolution ** yResolution Resolution ** useExternalFonts UseExternalFonts true useScalableFonts UseScalableFonts true logExternalFonts LogExternalFonts false externalFontTolerance ExternalFontTolerance 10.0 palette Palette Color maxGrayRamp MaxGrayRamp 128 maxRGBRamp MaxRGBRamp 5 maxDynamicColors MaxDynamicColors 256 useBackingPixmap UseBackingPixmap true useXPutImage UseXPutImage true useXSetTile UseXSetTile true regularFonts RegularFonts see below symbolFonts SymbolFonts see below dingbatFonts DingbatFonts see below ** Calculated from display metrics. Notes on Resources: Ghostscript doesn't look at the default system background and foreground colors; if you want to change the background or foreground color, you must set them explicitly for Ghostscript. (This is a deliberate choice, so that PostScript documents will display correctly -- with white = white and black = black -- by default, even if text windows use other colors.) The geometry resource only affects window placement. Resolution is given in pixels per inch. The font tolerance gives largest acceptable difference in height of the screen font. The tolerance is expressed as a percentage of the height of the desired font. The palette resource can be used to restrict ghostscript to using a grayscale or monochrome palette. The maxRGBRamp and maxGrayRamp control the maximum number of colors that ghostscript allocates ahead of time for the dither cube/ramp. Ghostscript will never preallocate more than half of the cells in a colormap. maxDynamicColors controls the maximum number of colors that Ghostscript will allocate dynamically in the colormap. The use... resources exist primarily to work around bugs in X servers. In particular, many versions of DEC's X server (DECwindows) have bugs that require setting useXPutImage or useXSetTile to false. Some servers do not implement backing pixmaps properly, or do not have enough memory for them. If you get strange behavior or "out of memory" messages, try setting useBackingPixmap to false. Some servers do not implement tiling properly. This will show up as broad bands of color where dither patterns should appear. If this happens, try setting useXSetTile to false. Some servers do not implement bitmap/pixmap displaying properly. This may show up as white or black rectangles where characters should appear, or characters may appear in "inverse video" (e.g., white on a black rectangle). If this happens, try setting useXPutImage to false. To use native X11 fonts, Ghostscript must map PostScript font names to the XLFD font names. The regularFonts, symbolFonts, and dingbatFonts resources give the name mapping for different encodings. The XLFD font name in the mapping must contain seven dashes. The X driver adds the additional size and encoding fields to bring the total number of dashes in the font name to 14. Here are the default font mappings: Regular Fonts: (Fonts available in standard or ISO-Latin-1 encoding) AvantGarde-Book:-Adobe-ITC Avant Garde Gothic-Book-R-Normal--\n\ AvantGarde-BookOblique:-Adobe-ITC Avant Garde Gothic-Book-O-Normal--\n\ AvantGarde-Demi:-Adobe-ITC Avant Garde Gothic-Demi-R-Normal--\n\ AvantGarde-DemiOblique:-Adobe-ITC Avant Garde Gothic-Demi-O-Normal--\n\ Bookman-Demi:-Adobe-ITC Bookman-Demi-R-Normal--\n\ Bookman-DemiItalic:-Adobe-ITC Bookman-Demi-I-Normal--\n\ Bookman-Light:-Adobe-ITC Bookman-Light-R-Normal--\n\ Bookman-LightItalic:-Adobe-ITC Bookman-Light-I-Normal--\n\ Courier:-Adobe-Courier-Medium-R-Normal--\n\ Courier-Bold:-Adobe-Courier-Bold-R-Normal--\n\ Courier-BoldOblique:-Adobe-Courier-Bold-O-Normal--\n\ Courier-Oblique:-Adobe-Courier-Medium-O-Normal--\n\ Helvetica:-Adobe-Helvetica-Medium-R-Normal--\n\ Helvetica-Bold:-Adobe-Helvetica-Bold-R-Normal--\n\ Helvetica-BoldOblique:-Adobe-Helvetica-Bold-O-Normal--\n\ Helvetica-Narrow:-Adobe-Helvetica-Medium-R-Narrow--\n\ Helvetica-Narrow-Bold:-Adobe-Helvetica-Bold-R-Narrow--\n\ Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique:-Adobe-Helvetica-Bold-O-Narrow--\n\ Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique:-Adobe-Helvetica-Medium-O-Narrow--\n\ Helvetica-Oblique:-Adobe-Helvetica-Medium-O-Normal--\n\ NewCenturySchlbk-Bold:-Adobe-New Century Schoolbook-Bold-R-Normal--\n\ NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic:-Adobe-New Century Schoolbook-Bold-I-Normal--\n\ NewCenturySchlbk-Italic:-Adobe-New Century Schoolbook-Medium-I-Normal--\n\ NewCenturySchlbk-Roman:-Adobe-New Century Schoolbook-Medium-R-Normal--\n\ Palatino-Bold:-Adobe-Palatino-Bold-R-Normal--\n\ Palatino-BoldItalic:-Adobe-Palatino-Bold-I-Normal--\n\ Palatino-Italic:-Adobe-Palatino-Medium-I-Normal--\n\ Palatino-Roman:-Adobe-Palatino-Medium-R-Normal--\n\ Times-Bold:-Adobe-Times-Bold-R-Normal--\n\ Times-BoldItalic:-Adobe-Times-Bold-I-Normal--\n\ Times-Italic:-Adobe-Times-Medium-I-Normal--\n\ Times-Roman:-Adobe-Times-Medium-R-Normal--\n\ ZapfChancery-MediumItalic:-Adobe-ITC Zapf Chancery-Medium-I-Normal-- Symbol Fonts: (using Symbol encoding) Symbol: -Adobe-Symbol-Medium-R-Normal-- Dingbat Fonts: (using Dingbat encoding) ZapfDingbats: -Adobe-ITC Zapf Dingbats-Medium-R-Normal-- For X11/NeWS, one can use the OpenWindows scalable fonts instead, which will give good quality output for any point size. In this environment, the relevant section of the resource file should look like this: Ghostscript.regularFonts: \ AvantGarde-Book: -itc-avantgarde-book-r-normal-- \n\ AvantGarde-BookOblique: -itc-avantgarde-book-o-normal-- \n\ AvantGarde-Demi: -itc-avantgarde-demi-r-normal-- \n\ AvantGarde-DemiOblique: -itc-avantgarde-demi-o-normal-- \n\ Bembo: -monotype-bembo-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Bembo-Bold: -monotype-bembo-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Bembo-BoldItalic: -monotype-bembo-bold-i-normal-- \n\ Bembo-Italic: -monotype-bembo-medium-i-normal-- \n\ Bookman-Demi: -itc-bookman-demi-r-normal-- \n\ Bookman-DemiItalic: -itc-bookman-demi-i-normal-- \n\ Bookman-Light: -itc-bookman-light-r-normal-- \n\ Bookman-LightItalic: -itc-bookman-light-i-normal-- \n\ Courier: -itc-courier-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Courier-Bold: -itc-courier-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Courier-BoldOblique: -itc-courier-bold-o-normal-- \n\ Courier-Oblique: -itc-courier-medium-o-normal-- \n\ GillSans: -monotype-gill-medium-r-normal-sans- \n\ GillSans-Bold: -monotype-gill-bold-r-normal-sans- \n\ GillSans-BoldItalic: -monotype-gill-bold-i-normal-sans- \n\ GillSans-Italic: -monotype-gill-normal-i-normal-sans- \n\ Helvetica: -linotype-helvetica-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Helvetica-Bold: -linotype-helvetica-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Helvetica-BoldOblique: -linotype-helvetica-bold-o-normal-- \n\ Helvetica-Narrow: -linotype-helvetica-medium-r-narrow-- \n\ Helvetica-Narrow-Bold: -linotype-helvetica-bold-r-narrow-- \n\ Helvetica-Narrow-BoldOblique: -linotype-helvetica-bold-o-narrow-- \n\ Helvetica-Narrow-Oblique: -linotype-helvetica-medium-o-narrow-- \n\ Helvetica-Oblique: -linotype-helvetica-medium-o-normal-- \n\ LucidaBright: -b&h-lucidabright-medium-r-normal-- \n\ LucidaBright-Demi: -b&h-lucidabright-demibold-r-normal-- \n\ LucidaBright-DemiItalic: -b&h-lucidabright-demibold-i-normal-- \n\ LucidaBright-Italic: -b&h-lucidabright-medium-i-normal-- \n\ LucidaSans: -b&h-lucida-medium-r-normal-sans- \n\ LucidaSans-Bold: -b&h-lucida-bold-r-normal-sans- \n\ LucidaSans-BoldItalic: -b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans- \n\ LucidaSans-Italic: -b&h-lucida-medium-i-normal-sans- \n\ LucidaSans-Typewriter: -b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-sans- \n\ LucidaSans-TypewriterBold: -b&h-lucidatypewriter-bold-r-normal-sans- \n\ NewCenturySchlbk-BoldItalic: -linotype-new century schoolbook-bold-i-normal-- \n\ NewCenturySchlbk-Bold: -linotype-new century schoolbook-bold-r-normal-- \n\ NewCenturySchlbk-Italic: -linotype-new century schoolbook-medium-i-normal-- \n\ NewCenturySchlbk-Roman: -linotype-new century schoolbook-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Palatino-Bold: -linotype-palatino-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Palatino-BoldItalic: -linotype-palatino-bold-i-normal-- \n\ Palatino-Italic: -linotype-palatino-medium-i-normal-- \n\ Palatino-Roman: -linotype-palatino-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Rockwell: -monotype-rockwell-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Rockwell-Bold: -monotype-rockwell-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Rockwell-BoldItalic: -monotype-rockwell-bold-i-normal-- \n\ Rockwell-Italic: -monotype-rockwell-medium-i-normal-- \n\ Times-Bold: -linotype-times-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Times-BoldItalic: -linotype-times-bold-i-normal-- \n\ Times-Italic: -linotype-times-medium-i-normal-- \n\ Times-Roman: -linotype-times-medium-r-normal-- \n\ Utopia-Bold: -adobe-utopia-bold-r-normal-- \n\ Utopia-BoldItalic: -adobe-utopia-bold-i-normal-- \n\ Utopia-Italic: -adobe-utopia-regular-i-normal-- \n\ Utopia-Regular: -adobe-utopia-regular-r-normal-- \n\ ZapfChancery-MediumItalic: -itc-zapfchancery-medium-i-normal-- \n Ghostscript.dingbatFonts: \ ZapfDingbats: -itc-zapfdingbats-medium-r-normal-- Ghostscript.symbolFonts: \ Symbol: --symbol-medium-r-normal-- Users who switch regularly between different X servers may wish to use the '*' wild card in place of the foundry name (itc, monotype, linotype, b&h, or adobe); users who do not switch X servers should leave the explicit foundry in the name, since it speeds up font accessing. To set these resources, put them in a file (such as ~/.Xdefaults) in the following form: Ghostscript*geometry: -0+0 Ghostscript*xResolution: 72 Ghostscript*yResolution: 72 Then load the defaults into the X server: % xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults Ghostscript will take advantage of the "HP XLFD Enhancements," if available, to use native X11 fonts for fonts that are anamorphically scaled, rotated, or mirrored. If the user has installed these changes to their X or font server, they will automatically be used when appropriate. SCO Unix -------- Because of bugs in the SCO Unix kernel, Ghostscript will not work if you select direct screen output (gdevsco.c) and also allow it to write messages on the console. If you are using direct screen output, redirect Ghostscript's terminal output to a file. ******** ******** Switches ******** Unless otherwise noted, these apply to all platforms. Normal switches --------------- Input control ------------- @filename Causes Ghostscript to read filename and treat its contents the same as the command line. (This is intended primarily for getting around MS-DOS's 128-character limit on the length of a command line.) Switches or file names in the file may be separated by any amount of white space (space, tab, line break); there is no limit on the size of the file. -- filename arg1 ... -+ filename arg1 ... Takes the next argument as a file name as usual, but takes all remaining arguments (even if they have the syntactic form of switches) and defines the name ARGUMENTS in userdict (not systemdict) as an array of those strings, *before* running the file. When Ghostscript finishes executing the file, it exits back to the shell. -@ filename arg1 ... Does the same thing as -- and -+, but expands @filename arguments. - This is not really a switch. It indicates to Ghostscript that the standard input is coming from a file or a pipe. Ghostscript reads from stdin until reaching end-of-file, executing it like any other file, and then continues processing the command line. At the end of the command line, Ghostscript exits rather than going into its interactive mode. NOTE: this switch works only for PostScript, not for PDF. -c tokens ... Interprets arguments, up to the next argument that begins with - followed by a non-digit or with @, as PostScript code. For example, if the file quit.ps contains just the word `quit', the following are equivalent: quit.ps and -c quit Each argument must be exactly one token, as defined by the `token' operator. -ffilename Execute the given file, even if its name begins with a - or an @. -f alone does nothing, but it provides a convenient way to terminate the list of tokens for the -c switch. File searching -------------- Note that by "library files" we mean all the files identified as using the search rule under "File searching" above: Ghostscript's own initialization files, fonts, and files named on the command line. -Idirectories Adds the designated list of directories at the head of the search path for library files. -P Makes Ghostscript look first in the current directory for library files. This is currently the default. -P- Makes Ghostscript *not* look first in the current directory for library files (unless, of course, the first explicitly supplied directory is `.'). Parameter setting ----------------- -Dname=token -dname=token Define a name in systemdict with the given definition. The token must be exactly one token (as defined by the 'token' operator) and must not contain any whitespace. If the token is a non-literal name, it must be true, false, or null. -Dname -dname Define a name in systemdict with value=true. -Sname=string -sname=string Define a name in systemdict with a given string as value. This is different from -d. For example, -dname=35 is equivalent to the program fragment /name 35 def whereas -sname=35 is equivalent to /name (35) def -uname Un-define a name, cancelling -d or -s. -gnumber1xnumber2 Equivalent to -dDEVICEWIDTH=number1 and -dDEVICEHEIGHT=number2, specifying the device width and height in pixels. This is for the benefit of devices (such as X11 windows and VESA displays) that require (or allow) width and height to be specified. Note that this causes documents of other sizes to be clipped, not scaled: see -dFIXEDMEDIA below. -rnumber -rnumber1xnumber2 Equivalent to -dDEVICEXRESOLUTION=number1 and -dDEVICEYRESOLUTION=number2, specifying the device horizontal and vertical resolution in pixels per inch. This is for the benefit of devices (such as printers) that support multiple X and Y resolutions. Miscellaneous ------------- -q Quiet startup -- suppress normal startup messages, and also do the equivalent of -dQUIET. Note that gs_init.ps makes systemdict read-only, so the values of names defined with -D/d/S/s cannot be changed (although, of course, they can be superseded by definitions in userdict or other dictionaries.) Special names ------------- -dBATCH causes Ghostscript to exit after processing all files named on the command line, rather than going into an interactive loop reading PostScript commands. Equivalent to putting -c quit at the end of the command line. -dCOLORSCREEN -dCOLORSCREEN=0 -dCOLORSCREEN=false On high-resolution devices (at least 150 dpi resolution, or -dDITHERPPI specified), -dCOLORSCREEN forces the use of separate halftone screens with different angles for C/M/Y/K or R/G/B if halftones are needed (this produces the best-quality output); -dCOLORSCREEN=0 uses separate screens with the same frequency and angle; -dCOLORSCREEN=false forces the use of a single binary screen. If COLORSCREEN is not specified, the default is to use separate screens with different angles if the device has fewer than 5 bits per color, and a single binary screen (which will never actually be used under normal circumstances) on all other devices. -dDELAYBIND causes 'bind' to remember all its invocations, but not actually execute them until the .bindnow procedure is called. Useful only for certain specialized packages like pstotext that redefine operators. -dDISKFONTS causes individual character outlines to be loaded from the disk the first time they are encountered. (Normally Ghostscript loads all the character outlines when it loads a font.) This may allow loading more fonts into RAM, at the expense of slower rendering. DISKFONTS is only effective if the diskfont feature was selected in the executable; otherwise it is ignored. -dDITHERPPI=lpi forces all devices to be considered high-resolution, and forces use of a halftone screen or screens with lpi lines per inch, disregarding the actual device resolution. Reasonable values for lpi are N/5 to N/20, where N is the resolution in dots per inch. -dFIXEDMEDIA causes the media size to be fixed after initialization, and causes pages of other sizes or orientations to be clipped. This may be useful when printing documents on a printer that can handle their requested paper size but whose default is some other size. Note that -g automatically sets -dFIXEDMEDIA, but -sPAPERSIZE= does not. -dFIXEDRESOLUTION causes the media resolution to be fixed similarly. -r automatically sets -dFIXEDRESOLUTION. -dLOCALFONTS causes Type 1 fonts to be loaded into the current VM, which is normally local VM, instead of always being loaded into global VM. Only useful for compatibility with Adobe printers for loading some obsolete fonts. -dNOBIND disables the 'bind' operator. Only useful for debugging. -dNOCACHE disables character caching. Only useful for debugging. -dNOCIE substitutes DeviceGray and DeviceRGB for CIEBasedA and CIEBasedABC color spaces respectively. Only useful on very slow systems where color accuracy is less important. -dNODISPLAY initializes Ghostscript with a null device (a device that discards the output image) rather than the default device or the device selected with -sDEVICE=. This is usually only useful when running PostScript code whose purpose is to compute something rather than produce an output image. -dNOFONTMAP suppresses the normal loading of the Fontmap file. This may be useful in environments without a file system. -dNOFONTPATH suppresses consultation of GS_FONTPATH. This may be useful for debugging. -dNOGC suppresses the initial automatic enabling of the garbage collector in Level 2 systems. (The vmreclaim operator is not disabled.) Only useful for debugging. -dNOPAUSE disables the prompt and pause at the end of each page. Normally one should use this (along with -dBATCH) when producing output on a printer or to a file; it also may be desirable for applications where another program is 'driving' Ghostscript. -dNOPLATFONTS disables the use of fonts supplied by the underlying platform (X Windows or Microsoft Windows). This may be needed if the platform fonts look undesirably different from the scalable fonts. -dNOPROMPT disables only the prompt, but not the pause, at the end of each page. This may be useful on PC displays that get confused if a program attempts to write text to the console while the display is in a graphics mode. -dORIENT1=true -dORIENT1=false defines the meaning of the 0 and 1 orientation values for the setpage[params] compatibility operators. The default value of ORIENT1 is true (set in gs_init.ps), which is the correct value for most files that use setpage[params] at all, namely, files produced by badly designed applications that 'know' that the output will be printed on certain roll-media printers: these applications use 0 to mean landscape and 1 to mean portrait. -dORIENT1=false declares that 0 means portrait and 1 means landscape, which is the convention used by a smaller number of files produced by properly written applications. -dQUIET suppresses routine information comments on stdout. This is currently necessary when redirecting device output to stdout. -dSAFER disables the deletefile and renamefile operators, and the ability to open files in any mode other than read-only. This may be desirable for spoolers or other sensitive environments. -dSHORTERRORS makes certain error and information messages more Adobe-compatible. -dWRITESYSTEMDICT leaves systemdict writable. This is necessary when running special utility programs such as font2c and pcharstr, which must bypass normal PostScript access protection. -sDEVICE=device selects an alternate initial output device, as described above. -sFONTMAP=filename1;filename2;... specifies (an) alternate name(s) for the Fontmap file. Note that the names are separated by : on Unix systems, by ; on MS-DOS or MS Windows systems, and by , on VMS systems, just as for search paths. -sFONTPATH=dir1;dir2;... specifies a list of directories that will be scanned when looking for fonts not found on the search path, overriding the GS_FONTPATH environment variable. -sOutputFile=filename selects an alternate output file (or pipe) for the initial output device, as described above. -sSUBSTFONT=fontname causes the given font to be substituted for all unknown fonts, instead of using the normal intelligent substitution algorithm. Also, in this case, the font returned by findfont will be the actual font named fontname, not a copy of the font with the FontName changed to the requested one. Debugging switches ------------------ The -Z switch only applies if the interpreter was built for a debugging configuration (DEBUG=1 or -DDEBUG selected at compile time). -A Fill empty storage with a distinctive bit pattern for debugging. Equivalent to -Z@. -A- Turn off -A, equivalent to -Z-@. -E Turn on tracing of error returns from operators. Equivalent to -Z#. -E- Turn off -E, equivalent to -Z-#. -Mn Force the interpreter's allocator to acquire additional memory in units of nK, rather than the default (currently 20K on MS-DOS systems, 50K on Unix). n is a positive decimal integer (not exceeding 63 on MS-DOS systems). -Nn Allocate space for nK names, rather than the default (normally 64K). n > 64 is only allowed if the interpreter was compiled with EXTEND_NAMES defined. -Zxxx Turn on debugging printout. -Z-xxx Turn off debugging printout. Each of the xxx characters selects an option. Case is significant. 0 = garbage collector, minimal detail 1 = type 1 & type 42 font interpreter 2 = curve subdivider/rasterizer 3 = curve subdivider/rasterizer, detail 4 = garbage collector (strings) 5 = garbage collector (strings, detail) 6 = garbage collector (chunks, roots) 7 = garbage collector (objects) 8 = garbage collector (refs) 9 = garbage collector (pointers) a = allocator (large blocks only) A = allocator (all calls) b = bitmap image processor B = bitmap images, detail c = color/halftone mapper d = dictionary put/undef D = dictionary lookups e = external (OS-related) calls f = fill algorithm (summary) F = fill algorithm (detail) g = gsave/grestore[all] h = halftone renderer H = halftones, every pixel i = interpreter, just names I = interpreter, everything j = (Japanese) composite fonts k = character cache & xfonts K = character cache, every access l = command lists, bands L = command lists, everything m = makefont and font cache n = name lookup (new names only) o = outliner (stroke) O = stroke detail p = band list paths P = all paths q = clipping r = arc renderer s = streams S = scanner t = tiling algorithm u = undo saver (for save/restore), finalization U = undo saver, more detail v = rectangle fill V = device-level output w = compression encoder/decoder x = transformations y = Type 1 hints Y = Type 1 hints, every access z = trapezoid fill # = operator error returns % = externally processed comments * = image parameters : = command list & allocator/time summary ~ = math functions The following switches select debugging options other than printout. $ = set unused parts of object references to identifiable garbage values + = use minimum-size stack blocks , = don't use path-based banding . = use small-memory table sizes even on large-memory machines ? = validate pointers before, during and after GC, also before and after save and restore; also make other allocator validity checks @ = fill newly allocated, garbage-collected, and freed storage with a marker (a1, c1, and f1 respectively) ******** ******** Frequently Asked Questions ******** Please consult our FAQ on the World-Wide Web at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsfaq.html or the text version at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsfaq.txt