Directory support/hypertex/tanmoy/ghostview-1.5-hacked
README
/* This file is part of the hacked version of the ghostview package */
/* which is distributed under the terms of the gnu license. The */
/* modification referred to above is by Tanmoy Bhattacharya, */
/* <tanmoy@qcd.lanl.gov> on Nov 17, 1994. Neither the modification, */
/* nor the original program provides any warranty. */
/* Last Modification: Dec 1 1994, 10:47 */
Ghostview -- An X11 user interface for ghostscript.
Ghostview is full function user interface for ghostscript 2.4 and
later. This distribution is modified to support the pdfmark operator.
Brief list of features:
- Ghostview parses any known version of Adobe's Document Structuring
Conventions.
- Page size is automatically determined from the Document Structuring
Comments. The user is able to override the values from the comments.
- Window size is set to the bounding box for Encapsulated PostScript figures.
- Default page size is Letter and can be changed via Xresources or
application defaults file to A4 (or any other valid size) for our
European friends.
- Scrollbars appear when necessary.
- Page orientation is automatically determined from the Document Structuring
Comments. The user is able to override the values from the comments.
- Ability to view at 4 orientations: Portrait, Landscape, Upside-down,
and Seascape (for those who rotate landscape the other direction).
- Ability to restrict rendering to grayscale or monochrome. (Requires
ghostscript 2.6.1.)
- Ability to mark pages for printing, or saving. (Good for people that
printed a 100 page document and lost page 59 due to a printer jam.)
- Can popup zoom windows at printer resolution
(1 display dot = 1 printer dot).
- Handles pdfmark operator. (alpha release)
The Ghostview distribution includes a Ghostview Widget that people
are encouraged to use in other programs.
Original (without pdfmark support) Ghostview-1.5 is available via
anonymous ftp from:
prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/ghostview-1.5.tar.gz
ftp.cs.wisc.edu:/pub/X/ghostview-1.5.tar.gz
Modified ghostview-1.5 (this release) available from
http://nqcd.lanl.gov/people/tanmoy/hypertex/ghostview-1.5-hacked.tar.gz
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
Building ghostview:
Set the ghostscript inputs directory in Imakefile.
If you have xmkmf, type "xmkmf", and then "make".
If not, manually edit the Makefile.
The following is unchanged from what came with the original
Ghostview. Please notice that the pdfmark project has been spliced in
by tanmoy@qcd.lanl.gov. Please do not bother Tim Theisen about
problems relating to that.
--------------- original ---------------
Feedback
I welcome any feedback that you care to give. Of course, I am interested
in your success stories. I will also try to help you if you have problems.
However, I cannot make any promise of support.
Please send all feedback to ghostview@cs.wisc.edu.<SEE MODS> This is a spare time
project and all the mail regarding ghostview must be directed to a
separate mail box otherwise your mail may very well get lost in the cracks.
Frequently asked questions:
1. Why does half the functionality of ghostview seem to be missing?
I cannot skip around in the document. I cannot select pages to
print. There are no page numbers in the table of contents.
The problem is that the document does not have the document
structuring comments. Without them, ghostview cannot tell where
pages start and end. Also, when reading from stdin there is no
capability to skip around.
2. Whenever I ask ghostview to display a page, a separate ghostscript
window pops up and disappears when ghostscript is done rendering
the page. How to I get ghostscript to write on the ghostview window?
You must be running ghostscript 2.4 or later for ghostview to work
properly. You can pick up the current copy of ghostscript from
the same place you got ghostview.
3. When I start ghostview, the information window pops up with:
"Warning: Could not allocate backing pixmap in main window."
What does this mean?
Ghostscript draws into a backing pixmap and copies from the
pixmap to the window. Some X servers have limited resources for
pixmaps. Creating the backing pixmap failed. Ghostview will then
request backing store on the window. If the backing store request
is not honored, obscured portions of the window will be lost.
You might also request a smaller window by setting a smaller
magstep or setting a smaller resolution.
4. When I start ghostview, sometimes I get this error:
"Error: SmeBSB Object: Left Bitmap of entry "0" is not one bit deep.."
Other times it works. What is going wrong?
The only time this problem occurs is when an OpenWindows X server
is the display. It is likely a server problem. I have placed a
work around in ghostview that turns off all use of bitmaps. The
-openwindows option enables this work around. However, with it
enabled the current magstep, orientation, and media cannot be
marked in the popup menus.
5. Sometimes ghostview produces an endless stream of this message:
"Warning: Select failed; error code 9".
Users have reported that this occurs on machines with a SYSV
and BSD library. The problem went away when they linked with the
BSD library rather than the default SYSV library.
This also occurs on some SPARCS running SunOS. This does not happen
for me and must be due to some differences in libraries or environment.
I have placed a SPARC executable (compiled on SunOS 4.1 with X11R5pl10
libraries statically linked in) on ftp.cs.wisc.edu for people
in this situation.
6. When using ncdwm, sometimes the window shrinks to an extremely
small size.
Either use the -ncdwm option to work around the problem, or apply
fix-10 to X11R5.
7. Ghostview pops up the information window with the message
"Exec of gs failed". It never displays anything in the main
viewport. What went wrong?
Either ghostscript is not installed or it cannot be found in
your PATH. Please pick up the latest copy of ghostcript from
the same place you got ghostview and install it.
Acknowledgements
I really should put down the names of all the people who have given
me suggestions and encouragement. (But I don't want to hold up the
release any longer. :-)
I do want to thank a few people.
- Karl Berry, for getting me into this mess :-) by soliciting for
volunteers.
- L. Peter Deutsch, for making ghostscript the good interpreter that
it is and for working with me to include modifications in support of
ghostview.
- Erik M. van der Poel, for writing a good publicly available file
selection widget that I was able incorporate into ghostview.
- Terry Poot, for porting ghostview to VMS.
NOTE: PLEASE send all ghostview related mail to ghostview@cs.wisc.edu.<SEE MODS>
...Tim
Tim Theisen Associate Researcher
Internet: ghostview@cs.wisc.edu Department of Computer Sciences
UUCP: uwvax!ghostview University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: (608)262-0438 1210 West Dayton Street
FAX: (608)262-9777 Madison, WI 53706-1685
-----------
Send mail about pdfmark support to tanmoy@qcd.lanl.gov.
