At 04:43 20-03-98 -0800, Chuck wrote:
>What do I need to view Post Script files (.ps)? Is there a shareware program
>for this?
The standard freeware program for viewing (and printing) postscript files
is called Ghostscript. The Internet home for Ghostscript is located at
<http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html>.
Ghostscript is available for Win16, Win32 (95 and NT4), OS/2, Atari, Mac,
VMS, Linux, and most Unix operating systems. I'll assume you are running
Win95 (or NT4) here.
The version of Ghostscript that concerns us is a DOS based "interpreter"
for the Postscript language. As such, it is not easy to use. However, there
is a Windows program called Ghostview which makes using Ghostscript as easy
to use for viewing postscript files as notepad is for viewing text files.
(Ghostview is a graphical interface for Ghostscript.)
Downloading and installing Ghostview and Ghostscrip is a multistep process.
You need to download Ghostview and several archives of Ghostscript files:
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/rjl/gsv25w32.zip (Ghostview, 574 KB)
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs510/gs510ini.zip (Ini files, 805 KB)
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs510/gs510w32.zip (Ghostscript, 556 KB)
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs510/gs510fn1.zip (Fonts, 1143 KB)
The easiest way to install all this is to create a new temporary folder on
your hard disk and unzip all the files from gsv25w32.zip into this folder.
Then add the other three files (gs510ini.zip, gs510w32.zip, and gs510fn1.zip)
to this folder *without* unzipping them. Finally, run the setup.exe (one of
the files unzipped from gsv25w32.zip).
It sounds complicated, but is actually straightforward. These instructions
are also contained in the readme from gsv25w32.zip. Basically, Ghostview
installs itself and then unzips and installs Ghostscript for you automatically.
Please notethat the fonts that come *free* with Ghostscript are not as good
as many commercial fonts and you might want to substitute other ones at some
later time. Also note that the C source code for GSview and GS are available
for download from <ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/> if you are interested. And
there is a Ghostscript manual at <ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/gs5man_e.pdf>.
Finally, note that Ghostview/Ghostscript can view Adobe PDF files.
I'm glad you asked about Postscript, because looking into this allowed me
to discover that Ghostscript and Ghostview have just been updated. I did
the downloads as I was typing this. The links work and the downloads fly.
Regards,
Bill
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