Ghostscript

Ghostscript is an interpreter free of the PostScript page description language and Portable Document Format ( PDF).

It consists of a software package that provides an API functions to display PostScript and PDF on printers or monitors. It offers a high degree of compatibility with the proprietary "Original" from Adobe.

History

1986 German Peter began to develop Ghostscript for the GNU project. He founded Aladdin Enterprises in order to market Ghostscript can also commercially. This he used a private dual license system in which he published the current version first under the Aladdin Free Public License ( AFPL ). This restricts commercial use of the software more than the GNU General Public License ( GPL ), but allows free distribution and use. Companies that want to distribute Ghostscript with their product and are either not subject to the license terms of the GPL or want to deliver any outdated version under the GPL, can a commercial license Artifex Commercial License purchase. This license Ghostscript is integrated into numerous applications known manufacturers such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and Xerox.

On the problem of this license policy was, as the released under the GPL Common Unix Printing System ( CUPS) from Easy Software Products (ESP ) developed the standard printing system for Linux distributions. CUPS allows Unix derivatives running programs, printing and builds on PostScript. Ghostscript comes here as a raster image processor used. ESP initiated by ESP Ghostscript secession from GPL Ghostscript in order to distribute a version with current, important for CUPS patch under the GPL can.

Today, the Californian company holds the copyright artofcode LLC. The commercial licensing is done by Artifex Software Inc. Since 2000 Raph Levien, as the successor of Peter German maintainer of the project. From version 8:56 ( 31 May 2006) AFPL Ghostscript has been set, so that since the latest version always appears immediately under the GPL. The cleavage ESP Ghostscript was thus finally abandoned: GPL Ghostcript is 8.57 and ESP Ghostscript 8.15.4 Ghostscript 8.60 were merged in the published August 1, 2007 GPL.

Use

The most important applications of Ghostscript are:

• Screening of PostScript or PDF files. Through this process, the present as a PostScript or PDF code description of a page is rendered for the printer or the monitor and visible as picture. One speaks of a software RIP.
• Conversion of PostScript and PDF files to other file formats. Mostly PostScript files are converted to PDF files or pure raster graphic formats. When converting to PDF complete information about vector and pixel elements remain, while the output of raster graphics all the elements will be rasterized at a specific resolution.
• Let run for developing and debugging PostScript programs PostScript code.

Ghostscript has been ported to many different operating systems, including Linux, Unix, VMS, Windows, Mac OS, AmigaOS and OS / 2 The size of the download is at version 8.71, depending on the operating system about 15 MB.

Graphical interfaces

Many graphical user interfaces ( GUIs), such as Ghostview or GSview, were written for Ghostscript. With the help of PostScript and PDF files can be viewed, printed or converted to other formats. This includes virtual printer driver that can generate with the help of Ghostscript PDF files from any application.

The GPL Ghostscript versions served as the basis for Display Ghostscript, a replica of Display PostScript, which is used to display graphics on some operating systems, such as NeXT is used. The project, however, was probably set in 2000.

For most of graphical interfaces Ghostscript must be installed on the system. However, there are also open- source projects, such as PDFCreator, which have all the necessary components are already permanently integrated. For the user, this results in the advantage that it only needs to download and install a program.