From robtu@itx.isc.com Tue Feb 2 07:46:59 1993 Received: from austin.itx.isc.com ([128.212.96.3]) by toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu (4.1/UCD.CS.2.0) id AA00645; Tue, 2 Feb 93 07:46:55 PST Received: by austin.itx.isc.com (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA19716; Tue, 2 Feb 1993 09:46:00 -0600 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 09:46:00 -0600 From: robtu@itx.isc.com (Rob Tulloh) Message-Id: <9302021546.AA19716@austin.itx.isc.com> To: announce-request@cs.ucdavis.edu Subject: resend: announce request for Amiga GhostScript patches Status: RO TITLE GhostScript VERSION Version 2.5.2 (for the Amiga) COMPANY None... This is GNU software. The author of the Amiga port can be reached on the internet. You can also try posting questions/comments to the usenet group comp.sys.amiga.applications. Rob Tulloh INTERACTIVE / SHL Tel: (512) 343 0376 X116 9442 Capital of Texas Hwy. North Fax: (512) 343 1414 Arboretum Plaza One, Suite 700 Net: robtu@itx.isc.com Austin, Texas 78759 DESCRIPTION GhostScript is the GNU postscript engine application. It provides similar (perhaps more?) functionality than the programs in the post17 distribution for the Amiga (see below). Ghostscript allows your Amiga to act as a PostScript interpreter. So, even if you do not have a PostScript printer, you can still process PostScript files and print/display them. The GhostScript program has many device drivers for printers, modems, and bitmap formats. You can tell GhostScript via command line arguments what output you would like generated and whether you would like it to write directly to a device, or to a scratch file, or to another program (using pipes). The distributed version of GhostScript for the Amiga contains support for these output devices: deskjet bj10e cdeskjet cdjcolor cdjmono dfaxhigh dfaxlow djet500 djet500c epson eps9high epsonc laserjet lbp8 ljet2p ljet3 ljetplus necp6 paintjet pjetxl r4081 bit gifmono gif8 pcxmono pcx256 pbm pbmraw pgm pgmraw ppm ppmraw The last items in the list represent bitmap/pixmap formats which you can display with other programs. The original GNU source code allows you to configure even more devices than those listed here, but the author chose to ignore devices that did not seem relevant to the Amiga (e.g. vga, svga). Some of the included devices may not be relevant but got thrown in because they compiled without errors. Refer to the GhostScript documentation and sources for more information about the device drivers supported by this release of Ghostscript. GhostScript fonts are available from many FTP sites. The README files distributed with GhostScript give information about how to get and install the fonts. The major difference between Post and GhostScript is that GhostScript provides many more output devices (I think Post only supports HP laserjet and deskjet devices). Also, there are quite a few more fonts available for GhostScript than for Post. One advantage that Post has versus GhostScript is the ability to open a screen on the Amiga display and directly display output. GhostScript has the ability to do this on platforms such as Unix (X11), and MS-DOS. There is currently no equivalent Amiga facility to do this. You must use some other program to display the output on the Amiga display or direct output directly to some device. Hopefully, someone will spend some time to write an Intuition interface for Amiga GhostScript that could be included in future releases. This version of GhostScript is the same as the originally distributed version of GhostScript on ftp.uu.net. No attempt was made to add functionality. Where changes were made to the source code or makefiles, it was done only to fix bugs or work around incompatibilities with Unix/MS-DOS versus the author's Amiga development environment (gcc/dmake). See the README.AMIGA file distributed with Amiga GhostScript for details. The original GNU documentation for GhostScript-2.5.2 can be found in the usr:lib/ghostscript/doc directory (in the original released version for the Amiga). NEW FEATURES Bug fix patch for GhostScript 2.5.2. The patch fixes 2 known problems with the original release and contains revised README files. The fixes are: 1. A workaround for the mktemp() bug in ixemul.library (v39.45). A new version of mktemp() is provided that works. This caused some drivers to fail with a setdevice error and a message about not being able to open the scratch file. Hopefully, a subsequent release of ixemul.library will fix this problem. 2. The epsonc driver has a memory allocation bug. Memory is allocated, but then memory locations outside the allocated segments are written to. I have applied a band-aid fix and sent mail to the author of the driver for assistance. A more permanent fix should be available soon. Additional files: 1. A revised version of README.AMIGA. It contains more information about installing and using GhostScript on the Amiga. Hopefully, it addresses some of the complaints about the original documentation. 2. A README.AMIGA.PATCH file explains about the problems fixed and what files were included in the patch archive. This is also the same information as in the file ghostscript-2.5.2-fix1.readme. 3. All the source code I changed to install the patches. This is for those users who might wish to build GhostScript themselves. This amounts to 2 C files and a Makefile. SPECIAL REQUIREMENT You must have the original release of GhostScript for the Amiga. This can be found on aminet in the text/dtp directory in the files ghostscrpt-2.5.2.lha and ghostscrpt-2.5.2.readme You need the lha program to unpack the archive. HOST NAME The patch was uploaded to aminet (amiga.phsysik.unizh.ch) on January 29, 1993. FILE NAME text/dtp/ghostscr-252-fix1.lha text/dtp/ghostscr-252-fix1.readme PRICE Free. DISTRIBUTABILITY Freely-distributable. The GNU copyright/copyleft restrictions apply. See the GNU documentation included in the original release for details.