GPL Ghostscript 8.54 - RISC OS 1.04 (21-Jun-06)

Purpose:     PostScript and PDF interpreter, PostScript to PDF converter
Author:      Copyright  2006 Aladdin Enterprises.
             RISC OS sprite device added by Graham Jones
Ported by:   Martin Wuerthner, using the excellent GCCSDK
Runs under:  RISC OS 3.1 or higher, runs on the Iyonix and the A9Home, tested
             on VirtualRPC/Adjust (see the note in Installation section!)
Requires:    A filing system coping with > 77 files per directory and long file
             names, SharedUnixLib, at least 3.5MB of free memory
Status:      Released under the GNU Public License, see the file
             !GhostScr.8_54.doc.COPYING
WWW:         http://www.mw-software.com/software/ghostscript/ghostscript.html

RISC OS port of GPL Ghostscript 8.54
------------------------------------
Ghostscript is a PostScript and PDF interpreter. PostScript and PDF are page
description languages, i.e., files in either language describe the appearance
of documents for viewing or printing. Ghostscript reads these files and renders
them in other graphics formats, e.g., RISC OS sprite format. Additionally,
Ghostscript can turn PostScript files into PDF format.

Installation
------------
This distribution of Ghostscript is fully self-contained and completely
replaces earlier versions. Earlier distributions consisted of several archives
that had to be put together. This is no longer the case. If you have earlier
versions of Ghostscript please delete them or move them away to directories
where they are not seen by the Filer.

The !GhostScr application directory just needs to be put somewhere where it is
"seen" during start-up. The most obvious candidate location is !Boot.Resources
where other resources are placed. Alternatively, put it anywhere else on your
hard disc and add it to the list of applications in the "Look at" section of
the boot configuration. Please avoid having two copies of !GhostScr around. If
you upgraded from an earlier version, double-click on the new version after
installation to activate it.

Problems are most commonly encountered with this port of Ghostscript when it
has not been installed correctly. The application must be installed in a filing
system supporting more than 77 files per directory and long filenames. The hard
disc format used by RISC OS 4 and above allows this. The HostFS filing system
used by the VA5000 and VirtualRPC emulators is fine, too.

On pre-RISC OS 4 systems or on emulators of pre-RISC OS 4 systems that make use
of hard disc image files instead of HostFS you need to use raFS or XFiles,
which allow you to create a long file name partition on your ADFS hard disc.

Another problem can be memory, gs needs at least 3.5MB. In all the aliases
defined in this application the wimpslot is set to 3500K, but some third-party
programs (including ps2pdf and GView) set the memory slot themselves and call
the gs executable directly. See the notes about memory requirements in the
section "Wimp front-ends for Ghostscript" if you want to use this version with
one of the popular front-ends.

This program requires the SharedUnixLibrary module. A skeleton !System
directory with this module is included in the official Ghostscript for RISC OS
distribution archive. The latest version of SharedUnixLibrary can be found at:
  http://www.riscos.info/downloads/gccsdk/sharedunixlib/system.zip

IMPORTANT NOTE for RISC OS 4 and VirtualRPC users: Please check whether you
have installed the "iSV General RISC OS 4 patch" module version 1.01a or
earlier. This module breaks an important system call and can cause application
to malfunction. Most notably, it stops Ghostscript from working. Version 1.01b,
released in May 2006 works fine. Before that time, VirtualRPC (both SE and
Adjust) has been shipped with version 1.01a of this module installed in its
boot sequence, which prevents Ghostscript from working correclty. You can check
for the presence and version of this module by opening a TaskWindow and typing
  *Help isv.
If you do not find any information displayed, then you do not have this module
installed, and there is no problem. If you do find information about the "iSV
General RISC OS 4 patch" module displayed and the version is 1.01a (or earlier)
you are strongly advised to either remove the file iSVPatch from your boot
sequence or upgrade to the latest version 1.01b. VirtualRPC users can upgrade
by downloading an upgrade from http://virtualacorn.co.uk/. The patch is only
required to read the online manuals for iSV Software products, so if you do not
need those, you may just as well remove the patch. Simply use the Filer's
"Find" feature on the !Boot directory to find where the file iSVPatch is
located and remove it.

Support
-------
Please note that this port is not an official MW Software product so I cannot
offer any support for it. If you have any problems installing or using
Ghostscript for RISC OS, please subscribe to the Ghostscript mailing list and
post your problem there.

To subscribe send a blank message to:   ghostscript-subscribe@acornusers.org
To post messages send them to:          ghostscript@acornusers.org
To unsubscribe send a blank message to: ghostscript-unsubscribe@acornusers.org

Using Ghostscript for RISC OS
-----------------------------
If you double-click on !GhostScr nothing happens except that this !Help file is
displayed. The reason is that Ghostscript is a command-line program, so to use
it you need to issue appropriate commands using the CLI or a TaskWindow.
Fortunately, there are Wimp front-ends for the most important tasks.

Wimp front-ends for Ghostscript
-------------------------------
The usual way to use Ghostscript is to use one of the Wimp front-ends depending
on what you want to do:

GView - for viewing PostScript (and PDF) files:
  http://www.mw-software.com/software/gview/gview.html

!ps2pdf - for PostScript to PDF conversion:
  http://www.runton.ndo.co.uk/

PrintPDF - for printing to PDF files:
  http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/software/

PLEASE NOTE: The above front-ends were created for Ghostscript 7.03, which
             required quite a bit less memory than Ghostscript 8.54. To use
             them successfully, you need to change their memory settings.
             Ghostscript 8.54 requires 3500K of memory to run.

GView allows you to set the amount of memory in its configuration window.
!ps2pdf has a setting in the file !ps2pdf.convert, which you can change.
PrintPDF does not require any changes.

Command-line usage
------------------
You can find the original Ghostscript documentation in the directory 8_54.doc.
All documentation is in HTML format. The main starting point is the file
Readme/html.

Pre-defined conversions
-----------------------
The main Ghostscript executable is simply called 'gs'. Type 'gs -h' in a task
window (you will probably have to type "WimpSlot 3500k 3500k" first to give it
enough memory) to get a list of a few of the options available and a full list
of the supported devices.

In addition to the devices supported by Ghostscript on other platforms, this
port supports the following RISC OS-specific devices:

spr1:  output a 2-colour sprite (black and white)
spr8m: output a grey-scale sprite
sprm:  output a 2-colour sprite if the page contains only black and white, else
       a grey-scale sprite
spr8c: output a full-colour sprite
spr:   output a 2-colour sprite if the page contains only black and white, else
       a grey-scale sprite if the page contains only shades of grey, else a
       full-colour sprite

Aliases are pre-defined for converting to RISC OS Sprite files (spr), PDF, PS,
BMP, JPEG, PBM, PCX, PNG, SGI and TIFF formats. All these aliases automatically
run 'gs' with using appropriate options.

To use one of these conversions type into a taskwindow, or at the command prompt:

    ps2<format> <input file> <output file>

optionally followed by extra Ghostscript options, for example '-r<res>' to set
a specific resolution or '-sPapersize=<new size>' to set a specific paper size.

Ghostscript supports output of individual pages to separate files. When
specifying the output file use %d as part of the filename. The occurrence of %d
will be replaced by the current page number.

The input file may be a PDF document as well as a Postscript file.

Other pre-defined conversions include:
  pdf2dsc  - make an index of a PDF file
  pdf2ps   - convert a PDF file to Postscript
  ps2ascii - extract ASCII text from a PostScript file
  ps2ps    - convert a Postscript file to Postscript, using appropriate flags
             should allow conversion between Level 1 and Level 2 etc.

If you want to try anthing else, take a look at the 'Use/htm' file in the docs directory.

Output direct to a printer
--------------------------
In the docs directory the file called 'Devices/htm' has good coverage of the
options available for specific printers (as well as one or two of the image
output formats).

A specific driver is chosen with the -sDevice=<Enter device name here> switch,
e.g. -sDevice=cdj500
Extra parameters are generally given with the -d switch,
e.g. -dBitsPerPixel=24

Using 'parallel:' as the output path should send the output data directly to
the parallel port, avoiding the need to use a potentially huge intermediate file.

Anything else
-------------
The official Ghostscript home page is at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
This is also the place where you can find the current source code. You can find
the additional source code files required to build this RISC OS version in the
release archive of the RISC OS version.

The first RISC OS port was made by Graham Jones (graham@4ozNuff.org.uk) and
published at http://www.acornusers.org/ghostscript

This port of version 8.54 was created using the excllent GCCSDK cross-compiler
environment instead of compiling the package under RISC OS as Graham did when
porting version 7.03. Nevertheless, parts of this port are based on Graham's
work. Most importantly, Graham provided the very useful RISC OS sprite device
code, which allows this port to create RISC OS sprites.

History
-------
RISC OS version 1.04 (21-Jun-06)
- based on GPL Ghostscript version 8.54

RISC OS version 1.03 (21-Apr-06)
- based on the latest version of AFPL Ghostscript: version 8.53

RISC OS version 1.02 (18-Apr-06)
- based on the latest version of GPL Ghostscript: version 8.50
- includes gdi device that supports Samsung GDI printers

Contacting me
-------------
Martin Wuerthner
Mannheimer Str. 18
67655 Kaiserslautern
Germany

Phone: +49-(0)631-3608205
Fax:   +49-(0)631-3608203

e-mail: martin@mw-software.com
WWW:    http://www.mw-software.com/
