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1
2 Ghostview -- An X11 user interface for ghostscript.
3
4 Ghostview is full function user interface for ghostscript 2.4.
5
6 Brief list of features:
7 - Ghostview parses any known version of Adobe's Document Structuring
8 Conventions.
9 - Page size is automatically determined from the Document Structuring
10 Comments. The user is able to override the values from the comments.
11 - Window size is set to the bounding box for Encapsulated PostScript figures.
12 - Default page size is Letter and can be changed via Xresources or
13 application defaults file to A4 (or any other valid size) for our
14 European friends.
15 - Scrollbars appear when necessary.
16 - Page orientation is automatically determined from the Document Structuring
17 Comments. The user is able to override the values from the comments.
18 - Ability to view at 4 orientations: Portrait, Landscape, Upside-down,
19 and Seascape (for those who rotate landscape the other direction).
20 - Ability to preview in any supported visual. (Can preview in gray-scale
21 or color on a Color monitor.)
22 - Ability to mark pages for printing, or saving. (Good for people that
23 printed a 100 page document and lost page 59 due to a printer jam.)
24 - Can popup zoom windows at printer resolution
25 (1 display dot = 1 printer dot).
26
27 The Ghostview distribution includes a Ghostview Widget that people
28 are encouraged to use in other programs.
29
30 Ghostview-1.4 is available via anonymous ftp from:
31 prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/ghostview-1.4.tar.Z
32 ftp.cs.wisc.edu:/pub/X/ghostview-1.4.tar.Z
33
34 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
35 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
36 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
37 (at your option) any later version.
38
39 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
40 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
41 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
42 GNU General Public License for more details.
43
44 Building ghostview:
45
46 If you have xmkmf, type "xmkmf", and then "make".
47 If not, manually edit the Makefile.
48
49 Feedback
50
51 I welcome any feedback that you care to give. Of course, I am interested
52 in your success stories. I will also try to help you if you have problems.
53 However, I cannot make any promise of support.
54
55 Please send all feedback to ghostview@cs.wisc.edu. This is a spare time
56 project and all the mail regarding ghostview must be directed to a
57 separate mail box otherwise your mail may very well get lost in the cracks.
58
59 Frequently asked questions:
60
61 1. Why does half the functionality of ghostview seem to be missing?
62 I cannot skip around in the document. I cannot select pages to
63 print. There are no page numbers in the table of contents.
64
65 The problem is that the document does not have the document
66 structuring comments. Without them, ghostview cannot tell where
67 pages start and end. Also, when reading from stdin there is no
68 capability to skip around.
69
70 2. Whenever I ask ghostview to display a page, a separate ghostscript
71 window pops up and disappears when ghostscript is done rendering
72 the page. How to I get ghostscript to write on the ghostview window?
73
74 You must be running ghostscript 2.4 or later for ghostview to work
75 properly. You can pick up the current copy of ghostscript from
76 the same place you got ghostview.
77
78 3. When I start ghostview, the information window pops up with:
79 "Warning: Could not allocate backing pixmap in main window."
80 What does this mean?
81
82 Ghostscript draws into a backing pixmap and copies from the
83 pixmap to the window. Some X servers have limited resources for
84 pixmaps. Creating the backing pixmap failed. Ghostview will then
85 request backing store on the window. If the backing store request
86 is not honored, obscured portions of the window will be lost.
87
88 You might also request a smaller window by setting a smaller
89 magstep or setting a smaller resolution.
90
91 4. When I start ghostview, sometimes I get this error:
92 "Error: SmeBSB Object: Left Bitmap of entry "0" is not one bit deep.."
93 Other times it works. What is going wrong?
94
95 The only time this problem occurs is when an OpenWindows X server
96 is the display. It is likely a server problem. I have placed a
97 work around in ghostview that turns off all use of bitmaps. The
98 -openwindows option enables this work around. However, with it
99 enabled the current magstep, orientation, and media cannot be
100 marked in the popup menus.
101
102 5. Sometimes ghostview produces an endless stream of this message:
103 "Warning: Select failed; error code 9".
104
105 Users have reported that this occurs on machines with a SYSV
106 and BSD library. The problem went away when they linked with the
107 BSD library rather than the default SYSV library.
108
109 This also occurs on some SPARCS running SunOS. This does not happen
110 for me and must be due to some differences in libraries or environment.
111 I have placed a SPARC executable (compiled on SunOS 4.1 with X11R5pl10
112 libraries statically linked in) on ftp.cs.wisc.edu for people
113 in this situation.
114
115 6. When using ncdwm, sometimes the window shrinks to an extremely
116 small size.
117
118 Either use the -ncdwm option to work around the problem, or apply
119 fix-10 to X11R5.
120
121 7. Ghostview pops up the information window with the message
122 "Exec of gs failed". It never displays anything in the main
123 viewport. What went wrong?
124
125 Either ghostscript is not installed or it cannot be found in
126 your PATH. Please pick up the latest copy of ghostcript from
127 the same place you got ghostview and install it.
128
129 Acknowledgements
130
131 I really should put down the names of all the people who have given
132 me suggestions and encouragement. (But I don't want to hold up the
133 release any longer. :-)
134
135 I do want to thank a few people.
136
137 - Karl Berry, for getting me into this mess :-) by soliciting for
138 volunteers.
139 - L. Peter Deutsch, for making ghostscript the good interpreter that
140 it is and for working with me to include modifications in support of
141 ghostview.
142 - Erik M. van der Poel, for writing a good publicly available file
143 selection widget that I was able incorporate into ghostview.
144 - Terry Poot, for porting ghostview to VMS.
145
146 NOTE: PLEASE send all ghostview related mail to ghostview@cs.wisc.edu.
147
148 Tim Theisen Systems Programmer
149 Internet: tim@cs.wisc.edu Department of Computer Sciences
150 UUCP: uwvax!tim University of Wisconsin-Madison
151 Phone: (608)262-0438 1210 West Dayton Street
152 FAX: (608)262-9777 Madison, WI 53706