This document describes how to use the command line Ghostscript client.
Ghostscript is also used as a general engine inside other applications (for viewing files for example).
Please refer to the documentation for those applications for using Ghostscript in other contexts.
The command line to invoke Ghostscript is
essentially the same on all systems, although the name of the executable
program itself may differ among systems. For instance, to invoke
Ghostscript on unix-like systems type:
There are also a number of utility scripts for common
to convert a PostScript document to PDF:
ps2pdf file.ps
The output is saved as file.pdf.
There are other utility scripts besides ps2pdf, including pdf2ps, ps2epsi, pdf2dsc, ps2ascii
and ps2ps. These just call Ghostscript with the appropriate
(if complicated) set of options. You can use the 'ps2' set with eps files.
Ghostscript is capable of interpreting PostScript, encapsulated PostScript
(EPS), DOS EPS (EPSF), and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). The interpreter reads and executes the files in sequence, using the method described under "File searching" to find them.
The interpreter runs in interactive mode by default. After processing the files given on the command line (if any) it reads further lines of PostScript language commands from the primary input stream, normally the keyboard, interpreting each line separately. To quit the interpreter, type "quit". The -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE options in the examples above disable the interactive prompting. The interpreter also quits gracefully if it encounters end-of-file or control-C.
The interpreter recognizes many options. An option may appear anywhere in the command line, and applies to all files named after it on the line. Many of them include "="
followed by a parameter. The most important are described in detail here. Please see the reference
sections on options and devices for a more complete listing.
Help at the command line: gs -h
You can get a brief help message by invoking Ghostscript with the
-h or -? switch, like this:
gs -h
gs -?
The message shows for that version of the Ghostscript executable:
the version and release information
the general format of the command line
a few of the most useful options
the formats it can interpret
the available output devices
the search path
the bug report address
On other systems the executable may have a different name:
System
invocation name
Unix
gs
VMS
gs
MS Windows 95 and later
gswin32c
MS Windows 3.1/Win32s
gswin32
OS/2
gsos2
Selecting an output device
Ghostscript has a notion of 'output devices' which handle saving or displaying the results in a particular format. Ghostscript comes with a diverse variety of such devices supporting vector and raster file output, screen display, driving various printers and communicating with other applications.
The command line option '-sDEVICE=device' selects which output device Ghostscript should use. If this option isn't given the default device (usually a display device) is used. Ghostscript's built-in help message (gs -h) lists
the available output devices. For complete description of the devices distributed with Ghostscript and their options, please see the devices section of the documentation.
Note that this switch must precede the name of the first input file, and
only its first use has any effect. For example, for printer output in a
configuration that includes an Epson printer driver, instead of just
'gs myfile.ps' you might use
gs -sDEVICE=epson myfile.ps
The output device can also be set through the GS_DEVICE environment variable.
Once you invoke Ghostscript
you can also find out what devices are available by typing
'devicenames ==' at the interactive prompt.
You can set the output device and process a file from the interactive prompt as well:
(epson) selectdevice
(myfile.ps) run
All output then goes to the Epson printer instead of the display until you
do something to change devices. You can switch devices at any time by
using the selectdevice procedure, for
instance like one of these:
(x11alpha) selectdevice
(epson) selectdevice
Output resolution
Some printers can print at several different resolutions, letting you
balance resolution against printing speed. To select the resolution on
such a printer, use the -r switch:
gs -sDEVICE=printer -rXRESxYRES
where XRES and YRES are the requested number of dots (or pixels) per inch. Where the two resolutions are same, as is the common case, you can simply use -rres.
The -r option is also useful for controlling the density of pixels when rasterizing to an image file. It is used this way in the examples at the beginning of this document.
Output to files
Ghostscript also allows you to control where it sends its output. With a display device this isn't necessary as the device handles presenting the output on screen internally. Some specialized printer drivers operate this way as well, but most devices are general and need to be directed to a particular file or printer.
To send the output to a file, use the -sOutputFile= switch.
For instance, to direct all output into the file ABC.xyz, use
gs -sOutputFile=ABC.xyz
When printing on MS Windows systems, output normally goes directly to the printer, PRN. On Unix and VMS systems it normally goes to a temporary file which is sent to the printer in a separate step. When using Ghostscript as a file rasterizer (converting PostScript or PDF to a raster image format) you will of course want to specify an appropriately named file for the output.
Ghostscript also accepts the special filename '-' which indicates the output should be written to standard output (the command shell).
Be aware that filenames beginning with the character % have a special meaning in PostScript. If you need to specify a file name that actually
begins with %, you must prepend the %os% filedevice explicitly. For example to output to a file named %abc, you need to specify
Note that on MS Windows systems, the % character also has a special meaning for the command processor (shell), so you will have to double it:
gs -sOutputFile=%%os%%%%abc (on MS Windows)
One page per file
Specifying a single output file works fine for printing and rasterizing
figures, but sometimes you want images of each page of a multi-page
document. You can tell Ghostscript to put each page of output in a
series of similarly named files. To do this place a template
'%d' in the filename which Ghostscript will replace with the
page number.
You can also control the number of digits used in the file name:
Generally %03d is the best option for normal documents.
Note however that this features is not supported by all devices; in particular
it does not work with document-oriented output devices like pdfwrite and
pswrite. See the -dFirstPage and -dLastPage switches
below for a way to extract single pdf pages.
As noted above, on MS Windows systems, you will have to double the
% character, e.g.,
gs -sOutputFile=ABC%%03d.xyz
Choosing paper size
Ghostscript is distributed configured to use U.S. letter paper as its
default page size. There are two ways to select other paper sizes from the
command line:
If the desired paper size is listed in the section on paper sizes known to Ghostscript below, you
can select it as the default paper size for a single invocation of
Ghostscript by using the -sPAPERSIZE= switch, for instance
-sPAPERSIZE=a4
-sPAPERSIZE=legal
Otherwise you can set the page size using the
pair of switches
-dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=w-dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=h
Where w be the desired paper width and h be the
desired paper height in points (units of 1/72 of an inch).
Individual documents can (and often do) specify a paper size, which takes
precedence over the default size. To force a specific paper size and
ignore the paper size specified in the document, select a paper size as
just described, and also include the
-dFIXEDMEDIA switch on the
command line.
The default set of paper sizes will be included in the currentpagedevice
in the InputAttributes dictionary with each paper size as
one of the entries. The last entry in the dictionary (which has numeric keys)
is a non-standard (Ghostscript extension) type of PageSize where the array
has four elements rather than the standard two elements. This four element
array represents a page size range where the first two elements are the lower
bound of the range and the second two are the upper bound. By default these
are [0, 0] for the lower bound and [16#fffff, 16#fffff] for the upper bound.
The range type of PageSize is intended to allow flexible page size sepcification
for non-printer file formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, EPS, ...
For actual printers, either the entire InputAttributes dictionary
should be replaced or the range type entry should not be included. To simplify
using the default page sizes in the InputAttributes dictionary,
the command line option -dNORANGEPAGESIZE can be used. Using
this option will result in automatic rotation of the document page if the requested
page size matches one of the default page sizes.
Changing the installed default paper size
You can change the installed default paper size on an installed version of Ghostscript, by editing the initialization file gs_init.ps.
This file is usually in the lib directory somewhere in the search path. See the section on finding files for details.
Find the line
% /DEFAULTPAPERSIZE (a4) def
Then to make A4 the default paper size, uncomment the line to change
this to
This supecedes the previous method of uncommenting the line
% (a4) ....
Sometimes the initialization files are compiled into Ghostscript and cannot be changed.
Interacting with pipes
As noted above, input files are normally specified on the command
line. However, one can also "pipe" input into Ghostscript from another
program by using the special file name '-' which is interpreted as standard input. Examples:
Ghostscript cannot read PDF files from standard input or a pipe because the PDF language inherently requires random access to the file. Thus '-' only works with PostScript documents.
When Ghostscript finishes reading from the pipe, it quits rather than
going into interactive mode. Because of this, options and files after the '-' in the command line will be ignored.
On Unix and MS Windows systems you can send output to a pipe in the same way. For example, to pipe the output to lpr, use the command
gs -q -sOutputFile=- | lpr
In this case you must also use the -q
switch to prevent Ghostscript from writing messages to standard output
which become mixed with the intended output stream.
Similar results can be obtained with the %stdout and %pipe% filedevices. The example above would become
gs -sOutputFile=%stdout -q | lpr
or
gs -sOutputFile=%pipe%lpr
(again, doubling the % character on MS Windows systems.)
In the last case, -q isn't necessary since Ghostscript handles the pipe itself and messages sent to stdout will be printed as normal.
Using Ghostscript with PDF files
Ghostscript is normally built to interpret both PostScript and PDF files, examining each file to determine automatically whether its contents are PDF or PostScript. All the normal switches and procedures for interpreting PostScript files also apply to PDF files, with a few exceptions. In addition, the
pdf2ps utility uses Ghostscript to convert PDF to (Level 2) PostScript.
Switches for PDF files
Here are some command line options specific to PDF
-dFirstPage=pagenumber
Begins interpreting on the designated page of the document.
-dLastPage=pagenumber
Stops interpreting after the designated page of the document.
-dPDFFitPage
Rather than selecting a PageSize given by the PDF MediaBox or
CropBox (see -dUseCropBox), the PDF file will be scaled to fit
the current device page size (usually the default page size).
This is useful to avoid clipping information on a PDF document when
sending to a printer that may have unprintable areas at the edge of
the media larger than allowed for in the document.
This is also useful for creating fixed size images of PDF files
that may have a variety of page sizes, for example thumbnail images.
-dPrinted
-dPrinted=false
Determines whether the file should be displayed or printed using the
"screen" or "printer" options for annotations and images. With
-dPrinted, the output will use the file's "print"
options; with -dPrinted=false, the output will use the
file's "screen" options. If neither of these is specified, the output will
use the screen options for any output device that doesn't have an
OutputFile parameter, and the printer options for
devices that do have this parameter.
-dUseCropBox
Sets the page size to the CropBox rather than the MediaBox.
Some files have a CropBox that is smaller than the MediaBox and
may include white space, registration or cutting marks outside
the CropBox. Using this option will set the page size
appropriately for a viewer.
-sPDFPassword=password
Sets the user or owner password to be used in decoding encrypted
PDF files.
Problems interpreting a PDF file
Occasionally you may try to read or print a 'PDF' file that
Ghostscript doesn't recognize as PDF, even though the same file
can be opened and interpreted by an Adobe Acrobat viewer.
In many cases, this is because of incorrectly generated PDF. Acrobat
tends to be very forgiving of invalid PDF files. Ghostscript tends to
expect files to conform to the standard. For example, even though
valid PDF files must begin with %PDF, Acrobat will
scan the first 1000 bytes or so for this string, and ignore any preceding
garbage.
In the past, Ghostscript's policy has been to simply fail with an
error message when confronted with these files. This policy has, no
doubt, encouraged PDF generators to be more careful. However, we now
recognize that this behavior is not very friendly for people who just
want to use Ghostscript to view or print PDF files. Our new policy is
to try to render broken PDF's, and also to print a warning, so that
Ghostscript is still useful as a sanity-check for invalid files.
PDF files from standard input
The PDF language, unlike the PostScript language, inherently requires
random access to the file.
If you provide PDF to standard input using the
special filename '-',
Ghostscript will copy it to a temporary file before interpreting the PDF.
Using Ghostscript with EPS files
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files are intended to be incorporated
in other PostScript documents and may not display or print on their
own. An EPS file must conform to the Document Structuring Conventions,
must include a %%BoundingBox line to indicate the
rectangle in which it will draw, must not use PostScript commands
which will interfere with the document importing the EPS,
and can have either zero pages or one page.
Ghostscript has support for handling EPS files, but requires
that the %%BoundingBox be in the header,
not the trailer.
To customize EPS handling, see EPS parameters.
When looking for initialization files (gs_*.ps,
pdf_*.ps), font files, the Fontmap file,
files named on the command line, and resource files, Ghostscript first tests whether the
file name specifies an absolute path.
Testing a file name for an absolute path
System
Does the name ...
Unix
Begin with / ?
MS Windows
Have : as its second character, or
begin with /, \,
or //servername/share/ ?
VMS
Contain a node, device, or root specification?
If the test succeeds, Ghostscript tries to open the file
using the name given. Otherwise it tries directories in this order:
The current directory (unless disabled by the
-P- switch);
The directories specified by -I
switches in the command line, if any;
The directories specified by the GS_LIB
environment variable, if any;
The directories specified by the
GS_LIB_DEFAULT macro (if any) in the makefile
when this executable was built.
GS_LIB_DEFAULT,
GS_LIB, and the
-I parameter may specify either a single
directory or a list of directories separated by a character appropriate for
the operating system (":" on Unix systems,
"," on VMS systems, and
";" on MS Windows systems). We think that trying
the current directory first is a very bad idea -- it opens serious security
loopholes and can lead to very confusing errors if one has more than one
version of Ghostscript in one's environment -- but when we attempted to
change it, users insisted that we change it back. You can disable looking
in the current directory first by using the
-P- switch.
Note that Ghostscript does not use this file searching algorithm for the
run or file
operators: for these operators, it simply opens the file with the name
given. To run a file using the searching algorithm, use
runlibfile instead of
run.
Finding PostScript Level 2 resources
Adobe specifies that resources are installed in a single directory.
Ghostscript instead maintains a list of resource directories,
and uses an extended method for finding resource files.
The search for a resource file depends on whether
the value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir
specifies an absolute path. The user may set it as explained in
Resource-related parameters.
If the user doesn't set the system parameter GenericResourceDir,
Ghostscript creates a default value for it with
attaching the string ../Resource
to directory paths explained in
How Ghostscript finds files,
except the current directory.
The first successful combination is used.
If the value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir
is an absolute path (the default),
Ghostscript assumes a single resource directory.
It concatenates :
The value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir;
The name of the resource category (for instance, CMap);
The name of the resource instance (for instance, Identity-H).
If the value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir
is not an absolute path,
Ghostscript assumes multiple resource directories.
In this case it concatenates :
The value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir;
The name of the resource category (for instance, CMap);
The name of the resource instance (for instance, Identity-H)
Due to possible variety of the part 1, the first successful combination is used.
For example, if the value of the system parameter GenericResourceDir
is the string ../Resource/
(or its equivalent in the file path syntax of the underlying platform),
Ghostscript searches for ../Resource/CMap/Identity-H
from all directories listed in
How Ghostscript finds files.
So in this example, if the user on a Windows platform specifies
the command line option -I.;../gs/lib;c:/gs8.50/lib,
Ghostscript searches for ../gs/Resource/CMap/Identity-H and
then for c:/gs8.50/Resource/CMap/Identity-H.
To get a proper platform dependent syntax Ghostscript inserts
the value of the system parameter
GenericResourcePathSep (initially
"/" on Unix and Windows, ":" on MacOS,
"." or "]" on OpenVMS).
The string ../Resource is replaced with a
platform dependent equivalent.
In the case of multiple resource directories,
the default ResourceFileName procedure retrieves either a path
to the first avaliable resource, or if the resource is not available it
returns a path starting with GenericResourceDir.
Consequently Postscript installers of Postscript resources
will overwrite an existing resource or add a new one to the first resource directory.
To look up fonts, after exhausting the search method described in the
next section, it concatenates together
the value of the system parameter
FontResourceDir (initially
/Resource/Font/)
the name of the resource font (for instance, Times-Roman)
Note that even although the system parameters are named "somethingDir", they
are not just plain directory names: they have "/" on the
end, so that they can be concatenated with the category name or font name.
Font lookup
Ghostscript has a slightly different way to find the file containing a font
with a given name. This rule uses not only the search path defined by
-I, GS_LIB, and
GS_LIB_DEFAULTas described
above, but also the directory that is the value of the
FontResourceDir system parameter, and an additional list of
directories that is the value of the GS_FONTPATH environment
variable (or the value provided with the -sFONTPATH= switch,
if present).
At startup time, Ghostscript reads in the Fontmap files in
every directory on the search path (or in the list provided with the
-sFONTMAP= switch, if present): these files are catalogs of
fonts and the files that contain them. (See the
documentation of fonts for details.) Then, when Ghostscript needs to
find a font that isn't already loaded into memory, it goes through a series
of steps.
First, it looks up the font name in the combined Fontmaps. If there is an
entry for the desired font name, and the file named in the entry can be
found in some directory on the general search path (defined by
-I, GS_LIB, and
GS_LIB_DEFAULT), and the file is loaded successfully, and
loading it defines a font of the desired name, that is the end of the
process.
If this process fails at any step, Ghostscript looks for a file whose name
is the concatenation of the value of the FontResourceDir
system parameter and the font name, with no extension. If such a file
exists, can be loaded, and defines a font of the desired name, that again is
the end. The value of FontResourceDir is normally the
string /Resource/Font/, but it can be changed with the
setsystemparams operator: see the PostScript Language
Reference Manual for details.
If that fails, Ghostscript then looks for a file on the general search path
whose name is the desired font name, with no extension. If such a file
exists, can be loaded, and defines a font of the desired name, that again is
the end.
If that too fails, Ghostscript looks at the GS_FONTPATH
environment variable (or the value provided with the
-sFONTPATH= switch, if present), which is also a list of
directories. It goes to the first directory on the list, looking for all
files that appear to contain PostScript fonts; it then adds all those files
and fonts to the combined Fontmaps, and starts over.
If scanning the first FONTPATH directory doesn't produce a file that
provides the desired font, it adds the next directory on the FONTPATH list,
and so on until either the font is defined successfully or the list is
exhausted.
Finally, if all else fails, it will try to find a substitute for the font
from among the standard 35 fonts.
CID fonts (e.g. Chinese, Japanese and Korean)
are found using a different method.
Differences between search path and font path
Search path
Font path
-I switch
-sFONTPATH= switch
GS_LIB and GS_LIB_DEFAULT
environment variables
GS_FONTPATH environment variable
Consulted first
Consulted only if search path and
FontResourceDir don't provide the file.
Font-name-to-file-name mapping given in Fontmap
files; aliases are possible, and there need not be any relation
between the font name in the Fontmap and the
FontName in the file.
Font-name-to-file-name mapping is
implicit -- the FontName in the file is
used. Aliases are not possible.
Only fonts and files named in Fontmap are used.
Every Type 1 font file in each directory is
available; if TrueType fonts are supported (the
ttfont.dev feature was included when the
executable was built), they are also available.
If you are using one of the following types of computer, you may wish to
set the environment variable GS_FONTPATH to
the value indicated so that Ghostscript will automatically acquire all the
installed Type 1 (and, if supported, TrueType) fonts (but see below for
notes on systems marked with "*"):
* On SGI IRIX systems, you must use Fontmap.SGI in
place of Fontmap or Fontmap.GS, because
otherwise the entries in Fontmap will take precedence over
the fonts in the FONTPATH directories.
** On Solaris systems simply setting GS_FONTPATH or
using -sFONTPATH= may not work, because for some reason some
versions of Ghostscript can't seem to find any of the Type1 fonts in
/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/outline. (It says: "15
files, 15 scanned, 0 new fonts". We think this problem has been fixed in
Ghostscript version 6.0, but we aren't sure because we've never been able to
reproduce it.) See Fontmap.Sol instead. Also, on Solaris
2.x it's probably not worth your while to add Sun's fonts to your font path
and Fontmap. The fonts Sun distributes on Solaris 2.x in the directories
are already represented among the ones distributed as part of Ghostscript;
and on some test files, Sun's fonts have been shown to cause incorrect
displays with Ghostscript.
These paths may not be exactly right for your installation; if the indicated
directory doesn't contain files whose names are familiar font names like
Courier and Helvetica, you may wish to ask your system administrator where
to find these fonts.
Adobe Acrobat comes with a set of fourteen Type 1 fonts, on Unix typically
in a directory called .../Acrobat3/Fonts. There is no
particular reason to use these instead of the corresponding fonts in the
Ghostscript distribution (which are of just as good quality), except to save
about a megabyte of disk space, but the installation documentation explains
how to do it on Unix.
CID fonts
CID fonts are PostScript resources containing a
large number of glyphs (e.g. glyphs for Far East languages,
Chinese, Japanese and Korean).
Please refer to the PostScript Language Reference,
third edition, for details.
CID font resources are a different kind of PostScript resource from fonts.
In particular, they cannot be used as regular fonts.
CID font resources must first be combined with a CMap resource, which
defines specific codes for glyphs, before it can be used as a font. This
allows the reuse of a collection of glyphs with different encodings.
The simplest method to request a font composed of a CID font resource
and a CMap resource in a PostScript document is
/CIDFont-CMap findfont
where CIDFont is a name of any
CID font resource, and CMap is a name of a CMap resource
designed for the same character collection. The interpreter will compose
the font automatically from the specified CID font and CMap resources.
Another method is possible using the composefont operator.
CID fonts must be placed in the /Resource/CIDFont/ directory.
They are not found using Font lookup
on the search path or font path.
CID font substitution
Substitution of CID font resources is controlled by the Ghostscript
configuration file lib/cidfmap,
which defines a CID font resource map.
The file forms a table of records, each of which should use one of two formats,
explained below. Users may modify lib/cidfmap to configure
Ghostscript for a specific need.
To substitute a CID font resource with another CID font resource, add a record like this :
/Substituted /Original ;
where Substituted is a name of CID font resource being used
by a document, and Original is a name of an available
CID font resource. Please pay attention that both them must be
designed for same character collection. In other words, you
cannot substitute a Japanese CID font resource with a Korean CID font resource,
etc. CMap resource names must not appear in
lib/cidfmap. The trailing semicolon and the space before it
are both required.
To substitute (emulate) a CID font resource with a TrueType font file, add a record like this :
/Substituted << keys&values >> ;
Where keys&values are explained in the table below.
Key
Type
Description
/Path
string
A path to a TrueType font file. This must be an absolute path.
If using -dSAFER, the directory
containing the font file must be on one of the permitted paths.
/FileType
name
Must be /TrueType.
/SubfontID
integer
(optional) Index of the font in font collection, such as TTC.
This is ignored if Path doesn't specify a collection.
The first font in a collection is 0.
Default value is 0.
/CSI
array of 2 elements
(required) Information for building CIDSystemInfo.
The first element is a string, which specifies Ordering.
The second element is a number, which specifies Supplement.
Currently only CIDFontType 2 can be emulated with a TrueType font.
The TrueType font must contain enough characters to cover an
Adobe character collection, which is specified in Ordering and used in documents.
Note that the font file path uses Postscript syntax for strings.
Due to that backslashes must be represented as a double backslash each.
Note that loading truetype fonts directly from
/Resources/CIDFont is no longer supported.
There is no reliable way to generate a character ordering for truetype
fonts. The 7.0x versions of Ghostscript supported this by assuming a Japanese
character ordering. This is replaced in the 8.0x and later releases with the more
general cidfmap mechanism.
The PDF specification requires CID font files to be embedded,
however some documents omit them. As a workaround
the PDF interpreter applies an additional substitution method when
a requested CID font resource is not embedded and it is not available.
It takes values of the keys Registry and Ordering
from the CIDFontSystem dictionary,
and concatenates them with a dash inserted.
For example, if a PDF CID font resource specifies
the generated subsitituite name is Adobe-CNS1.
The latter may look some confusing for a font name,
but we keep it for compatibility with older Ghostscript versions,
which do so due to a historical reason.
Add a proper record to lib/cidfmap to provide it.
Please note that when a PDF font resource specifies
/Registry (Adobe) /Ordering (Identity)
there is no way to determine the language properly.
If the CID font file is not embedded, the Adobe-Identity
record depends on the document and a correct record isn't possible when
a document refers to multiple Far East languages.
In the latter case add individual records for specific CID font names used in the document.
Consequently, if you want to handle any PDF document with
non-embedded CID fonts (which isn't a correct PDF),
you need to create a suitable lib/cidfmap by hand,
possibly a specific one for each document.
Temporary files
Where Ghostscript puts temporary files
Platform
Filename
Location
MS Windows and OpenVMS
_temp_XX.XXX
Current directory
OS/2
gsXXXXXX
Current directory
Unix
gs_XXXXX
/tmp
You can change in which directory Ghostscript creates temporary files by
setting the TMPDIR or TEMP environment
variable to the name of the directory you want used. Ghostscript currently
doesn't do a very good job of deleting temporary files if it exits because
of an error; you may have to delete them manually from time to time.
Notes on specific platforms
Unix
The Ghostscript distribution includes some Unix shell scripts to use with
Ghostscript in different environments. These are all user-contributed
code, so if you have questions, please contact the user identified in the
file, not Aladdin Enterprises or artofcode LLC.
pv.sh
Preview a specified page of a dvi file in an X window
sysvlp.sh
System V 3.2 lp interface for parallel printer
pj-gs.sh
Printing on an H-P PaintJet under HP-UX
unix-lpr.sh
Queue filter for lpr under Unix;
its documentation is intended for system
administrators
lprsetup.sh
Setup for unix-lpr.sh
VMS
To be able to specify switches and file names when invoking the
interpreter, define gs as a foreign command:
$ gs == "$disk:[directory]gs.exe"
where the "disk" and "directory" specify where
the Ghostscript executable is located. For instance,
$ gs == "$dua1:[ghostscript]gs.exe"
On VMS systems, the last character of each "directory" name indicates
what sort of entity the "directory" refers to. If the "directory" name
ends with a colon ":", it is taken to refer to a logical
device, for instance
If the "directory" name ends with a closing square bracket
"]", it is taken to refer to a real directory, for instance
$ define gs_lib dua1:[ghostscript]
Defining the logical GS_LIB
$ define gs_libdisk:[directory]
allows Ghostscript to find its initialization files in the Ghostscript
directory even if that's not where the executable resides.
Although VMS DCL itself converts unquoted parameters to upper case, C
programs such as Ghostscript receive their parameters through the C runtime
library, which forces all unquoted command-line parameters to lower case.
That is, with the command
$ gs -Isys$login:
Ghostscript sees the switch as -isys$login,
which doesn't work. To preserve the case of switches, quote them like
this:
$ gs "-Isys$login:"
If you write printer output to a file with
-sOutputFile= and then want to print the file later, use
"PRINT/PASSALL".
PDF files (or PostScript files that use the
setfileposition operator) must be "stream LF" type files to
work properly on VMS systems. (Note: This definitely matters
if Ghostscript was compiled with DEC C; we are not sure of the situation if
you use gcc.) Because of this, if you transfer files by
FTP, you probably need to do one of these two things after the transfer:
If the FTP transfer was in text (ASCII) mode:
$ convert/fdl=streamlf.fdl input-file output-file
where the contents of the file STREAMLF.FDL are
FILE
ORGANIZATION sequential
RECORD
BLOCK_SPAN yes
CARRIAGE_CONTROL carriage_return
FORMAT stream_lf
If the FTP transfer was in binary mode:
$ set file/attribute=(rfm:stmlf)
Using X Windows on VMS
If you are using on an X Windows display, you can set it up with the node
name and network transport, for instance
$ set display/create/node="doof.city.com"/transport=tcpip
and then run Ghostscript by typing gs at the command line.
MS Windows
The name of the Ghostscript command line executable on MS Windows is
gswin32c so use this instead of the plain 'gs' in
the quickstart examples.
You must add gs\bin and
gs\lib to the PATH, where
gs is the top-level Ghostscript directory.
When passing options to ghostcript through a batch file wrapper such as
ps2pdf.bat you need to substitute '#' for '=' as the separator
between options and their arguments. For example:
ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE#a4 file.ps file.pdf
Ghostscript treats '#' the same internally, and the '=' is mangled by
the command shell.
There is also an older version for windows called just gswin32
that provides its own window for the interactive postscript prompt. Except
on Windows 3.1, gswin32c is the better option since it uses the
native command prompt window.
MS-DOS
Note: Ghostscript is no longer supported on MS-DOS.
Invoking Ghostscript from the command prompt in Windows is supported by
the Windows executable described above.
X Windows
Ghostscript looks for the following resources under the program name
ghostscript and class name
Ghostscript; the ones marked "**" are
calculated from display metrics:
To set X resources, put them in a file (such as
~/.Xdefaults on Unix) in a form like this:
Ghostscript*geometry:
595x842-0+0
Ghostscript*xResolution:
72
Ghostscript*yResolution:
72
Then merge these resources into the X server's resource database:
xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults
Ghostscript doesn't look at the default system background and foreground
colors; if you want to change the background or foreground color, you must
set them explicitly for Ghostscript. This is a deliberate choice, so that
PostScript documents will display correctly by default -- with white as
white and black as black -- even if text windows use other colors.
The geometry resource affects only window placement.
Resolution is expressed in pixels per inch (1 inch = 25.4mm).
The font tolerance gives the largest acceptable difference in height of the
screen font, expressed as a percentage of the height of the desired font.
The palette resource can be used to restrict Ghostscript to
using a grayscale or monochrome palette.
maxRGBRamp and
maxGrayRamp control the maximum number of
colors that ghostscript allocates ahead of time for the dither cube (ramp).
Ghostscript never preallocates more than half the cells in a colormap.
maxDynamicColors controls the maximum
number of colors that Ghostscript will allocate dynamically in the
colormap.
Working around bugs in X servers
The "use..." resources exist primarily to work around bugs
in X servers.
Old versions of DEC's X server (DECwindows) have bugs that
require setting useXPutImage or
useXSetTile to
false.
Some servers do not implement backing pixmaps properly, or do not
have enough memory for them. If you get strange behavior or "out
of memory" messages, try setting
useBackingPixmap to
false.
Some servers do not implement tiling properly. This appears
as broad bands of color where dither patterns should appear. If
this happens, try setting
useXSetTile to
false.
Some servers do not implement bitmap or pixmap displaying properly.
This may appear as white or black rectangles where characters
should appear; or characters may appear in "inverse video" (for
instance, white on a black rectangle rather than black on white).
If this happens, try setting
useXPutImage to
false.
X fonts
To use native X11 fonts, Ghostscript must map PostScript font names to the
XLFD font names. The resources regularFonts
(fonts available in standard or ISO-Latin-1 encoding),
symbolFonts (using Symbol encoding), and
dingbatFonts (using Dingbat encoding) give
the name mapping for different encodings. The XLFD font name in the
mapping must contain 7 dashes; the X driver adds the additional size and
encoding fields to bring the total number of dashes in the font name to 14.
See the appendix "X default font mappings"
for the full list of default mappings.
Users who switch regularly between different X servers may wish to use the
"*" wild card in place of the foundry name
(itc,
monotype,
linotype,
b&h, or
adobe); users who do not switch X servers
should leave the explicit foundry in the name, since it speeds up access to
fonts.
Ghostscript takes advantage of the "HP XLFD Enhancements," if available, to
use native X11 fonts for fonts that are anamorphically scaled, rotated, or
mirrored. If the changes have been installed to the X or font server, they
are automatically used when appropriate.
Using Ghostscript fonts on X displays
Font files distributed with Ghostscript can be used on X Windows displays.
You can find full instructions in the
documentation on fonts.
X device parameters
In addition to the device parameters recognized by all devices, Ghostscript's X
driver provides parameters to adjust its performance. Users will rarely
need to modify these. Note that these are parameters to be set with the
-d switch in the command line (e.g.,
-dMaxBitmap=10000000), not resources to be defined in the
~/.Xdefaults file.
AlwaysUpdate <boolean>
If true, the driver updates the screen after each
primitive drawing operation; if false (the default), the
driver uses an intelligent buffered updating algorithm.
MaxBitmap <integer>
If the amount of memory required to hold the pixmap for the window is no
more than the value of MaxBitmap, the driver will draw to a
pixmap in Ghostscript's address space (called a "client-side pixmap") and
will copy it to the screen from time to time; if the amount of memory
required for the pixmap exceeds the value of MaxBitmap, the
driver will draw to a server pixmap. Using a client-side pixmap usually
provides better performance -- for bitmap images, possibly much better
performance -- but since it may require quite a lot of RAM (e.g., about 2.2
Mb for a 24-bit 1024x768 window), the default value of
MaxBitmap is 0.
These control various aspects of the driver's buffering behavior. For
details, please consult the source file gdevx.h.
SCO Unix
Because of bugs in the SCO Unix kernel, Ghostscript will not work if you
select direct screen output and also allow it to write messages on the
console. If you are using direct screen output, redirect Ghostscript's
terminal output to a file.
Command line options
Unless otherwise noted, these switches can be used on all platforms.
General switches
Input control
@filename
Causes Ghostscript to read filename and treat its contents the
same as the command line. (This was intended primarily for getting around
DOS's 128-character limit on the length of a command line.) Switches or
file names in the file may be separated by any amount of white space
(space, tab, line break); there is no limit on the size of the file.
--filename arg1 ... -+filename arg1 ...
Takes the next argument as a file name as usual, but takes all
remaining arguments (even if they have the syntactic form of switches) and
defines the name ARGUMENTS in userdict (not systemdict) as
an array of those strings, before running the file. When
Ghostscript finishes executing the file, it exits back to the shell.
-@filename arg1 ...
Does the same thing as -- and -+, but
expands @filename arguments.
- -_
These are not really switches: they tell Ghostscript to read from
standard input, which is coming from a file or a pipe,
with or without buffering.
On some systems, Ghostscript may read the input one character at a time,
which is useful for programs such as ghostview that generate input for
Ghostscript dynamically and watch for some response, but can slow processing.
If performance is significantly slower than with a named file,
try '-_' which always reads the input in blocks.
However, '-' is equivalent on most systems.
-ctokens ...
Interprets arguments as PostScript code up to the next argument that
begins with "-" followed by a non-digit, or with
"@". For example, if the file quit.ps
contains just the word "quit", then
-c quit on the command line is equivalent to
quit.ps there. Each argument must be exactly one token, as
defined by the token operator.
-f
Interprets following non-switch arguments as file names to be executed
using the normal run command. Since this is the default
behavior, -f is useful only for terminating the list of
tokens for the -c switch.
-ffilename
Execute the given file, even if its name begins with a
"-" or "@".
File searching
Note that by "library files" here we mean all the files identified using
the search rule under "How Ghostscript finds
files" above: Ghostscript's own initialization files, fonts, and files
named on the command line.
-Idirectories
Adds the designated list of directories at the head of the search path
for library files.
-P
Makes Ghostscript look first in the current directory for library
files. This is currently the default.
-P-
Makes Ghostscript not look first in the current
directory for library files (unless, of course, the first explicitly
supplied directory is ".").
Setting parameters
-Dname -dname
Define a name in systemdict with value=true.
-Dname=token -dname=token
Define a name in systemdict with the given definition. The token must
be exactly one token (as defined by the token operator) and
must not contain any whitespace. If the token is a non-literal name, it
must be true, false, or null.
-Sname=string -sname=string
Define a name in systemdict with a given string as value. This is
different from -d. For example, -dXYZ=35
on the command line is equivalent to the program fragment
/XYZ 35 def
whereas -sXYZ=35 is equivalent to
/XYZ (35) def
-uname
Un-define a name, cancelling -d or -s.
Note that the initialization file gs_init.ps makes
systemdict read-only, so the values of names defined with
-D, -d, -S, and
-s cannot be changed -- although, of course, they can be
superseded by definitions in userdict or other dictionaries.
However, device parameters set this way (PageSize,
Margins, etc.) are not read-only, and can
be changed by code in PostScript files.
-gnumber1xnumber2
Equivalent to -dDEVICEWIDTH=number1 and
-dDEVICEHEIGHT=number2, specifying the device
width and height in pixels for the benefit of devices such as X11 windows
and VESA displays that require (or allow) you to specify width and height.
Note that this causes documents of other sizes to be clipped, not scaled:
see -dFIXEDMEDIA below.
-rnumber (same
as -rnumberxnumber)
-rnumber1xnumber2
Equivalent to -dDEVICEXRESOLUTION=number1 and
-dDEVICEYRESOLUTION=number2, specifying the device
horizontal and vertical resolution in pixels per inch for the benefit of
devices such as printers that support multiple X and Y resolutions.
Suppress messages
-q
Quiet startup: suppress normal startup messages, and also do the
equivalent of -dQUIET.
Parameter switches (-d and -s)
As noted above, -d and -s define initial
values for PostScript names. Some of these names are parameters that
control the interpreter or the graphics engine. You can also use
-d or -s to define a value for any device
parameter of the initial device (the one defined with
-sDEVICE=, or the default device if this switch is not
used). For example, since the ppmraw device has a numeric
GrayValues parameter that controls the number of bits per
component, -sDEVICE=ppmraw -dGrayValues=16 will make this
the default device and set the number of bits per component to 4 (log2(16)).
Rendering parameters
-dCOLORSCREEN
-dCOLORSCREEN=0
-dCOLORSCREEN=false
On high-resolution devices (at least 150 dpi resolution, or
-dDITHERPPI specified), -dCOLORSCREEN
forces the use of separate halftone screens with different angles for CMYK
or RGB if halftones are needed (this produces the best-quality output);
-dCOLORSCREEN=0 uses separate screens with the same
frequency and angle; -dCOLORSCREEN=false forces the use of
a single binary screen. The default if COLORSCREEN is not
specified is to use separate screens with different angles if the device
has fewer than 5 bits per color, and a single binary screen (which is never
actually used under normal circumstances) on all other devices.
-dDITHERPPI=lpi
Forces all devices to be considered high-resolution, and forces use of
a halftone screen or screens with lpi lines per inch, disregarding
the actual device resolution. Reasonable values for lpi are
N/5 to N/20, where N is the
resolution in dots per inch.
-dDOINTERPOLATE
Turns on image interpolation for all images, improving image quality for
scaled images at the expense of speed. Note that
-dNOINTERPOLATE overrides -dDOINTERPOLATE if
both are specified.
-dTextAlphaBits=n
-dGraphicsAlphaBits=n
These options control the use of subsample antialiasing. Their use is highly recommended for producing high quality rasterizations. The subsampling box size n should be 4 for optimum output, but smaller values can be used for faster rendering. Antialiasing is enabled separately for text and graphics content.
Allowed values are 1, 2 or 4.
-dAlignToPixels=n
Chooses glyph alignent to integral pixel boundaries (if set to the value 1)
or to subpixels (value 0). Subpixels are a smaller raster grid
which is used internally for text antialiasing.
The number of subpixels in a pixel usually is 2^TextAlphaBits,
but this may be automatically reduced for big characters to save space
in character cache.
The parameter has no effect if -dTextAlphaBits=1.
Default value is 1.
Setting -dAlignToPixels=0 can improve rendering
of poorly hinted fonts, but may impair the appearance of well-hinted fonts.
-dGridFitTT=n
This specifies the initial value for the implementation specific
user parameter GridFitTT.
It controls a grid fitting of True Type fonts
(Some people call it "hinting", but stronly speaking
the latter is a Type 1 feature).
Setting this to 1 enables grid fitting for True Type glyphs
that don't involve patented instructions. The value 0 disables grid
fitting for all True Type fonts. The default value is 0.
Setting -dGridFitTT=1 may improve rendering
of True Type fonts. In particular, some fonts rely on the grid fitting
instructions for proper rasterization.
Ghostscript only supports the freely-implementable subset of grid
fitting instructions. If a patented instruction is encountered, a
warning is printed to stderr and the glyph is rendered with no
grid fitting.
-dUseCIEColor
Set UseCIEColor in the page device dictionary, remapping device-dependent
color values through a CIE color space. This can can improve conversion
of CMYK documents to RGB.
-dNOCIE
Substitutes DeviceGray and DeviceRGB
for CIEBasedA and CIEBasedABC color spaces respectively. Useful only on
very slow systems where color accuracy is less important.
-dNOSUBSTDEVICECOLORS
This switch prevents the substitution of the ColorSpace
resources (DefaultGray, DefaultRGB, and
DefaultCMYK) for the DeviceGray,
DeviceRGB, and DeviceCMYK color spaces.
This switch is primarily useful for PDF creation using the pdfwrite
device when retaining the color spaces from the original document is
important.
-dNOPSICC
Disables the automatic loading and use of an input color space that is
contained in a PostScript file as DSC comments starting with the %%BeginICCProfile:
comment. ICC profiles are sometimes embedded by applications to convey the exact
input color space allowing better color fidelity. Since the embedded ICC profiles
often use multidimensional RenderTables, color conversion may be slower than using
the Default color conversion invoked when the -dUseCIEColor
option is specified, therefore the -dNOPSICC option may result
in improved performance at slightly reduced color fidelity.
-dNOINTERPOLATE
Turns off image interpolation, improving performance on interpolated
images at the expense of image quality. -dNOINTERPOLATE
overrides -dDOINTERPOLATE.
-dNOTRANSPARENCY
Turns off PDF 1.4 transparency, resulting in faster (but possibly
incorrect) rendering of pages containing PDF 1.4 transparency and
blending.
-dDOPS
Enables processing of DoPS directives in PDF files. DoPS has in
fact been deprecated for some time. Use of this option is not
recommended in security-conscious applications, as it increases the
scope for malicious code. -dDOPS has no effect on
processing of PostScript source files. Note: in releases 7.30 and
earlier, processing of DoPS was always enabled.
Page parameters
-dFIXEDMEDIA
Causes the media size to be fixed after initialization, forcing pages
of other sizes or orientations to be clipped. This may be useful when
printing documents on a printer that can handle their requested paper size
but whose default is some other size. Note that -g
automatically sets -dFIXEDMEDIA, but
-sPAPERSIZE= does not.
-dFIXEDRESOLUTION
Causes the media resolution to be fixed similarly. -r
automatically sets -dFIXEDRESOLUTION.
-dORIENT1=true
-dORIENT1=false
Defines the meaning of the 0 and 1 orientation values for the
setpage[params] compatibility operators. The default value of
ORIENT1 is true (set in gs_init.ps), which
is the correct value for most files that use setpage[params] at all,
namely, files produced by badly designed applications that "know" that the
output will be printed on certain roll-media printers: these applications
use 0 to mean landscape and 1 to mean portrait.
-dORIENT1=false declares that 0 means portrait and 1 means
landscape, which is the convention used by a smaller number of files
produced by properly written applications.
-dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=w -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=h
Sets the initial page width to w or initial page height to
h respectively, specified in 1/72" units.
-sDEFAULTPAPERSIZE=a4
This value will be used to replace the device default papersize ONLY
if the default papersize for the device is 'letter' or 'a4' serving
to insulate users of A4 or 8.5x11 from particular device defaults
(the collection of contributed drivers in Ghostscript vary as to
the default size).
Font-related parameters
-dDISKFONTS
Causes individual character outlines to be loaded from the disk the
first time they are encountered. (Normally Ghostscript loads all the
character outlines when it loads a font.) This may allow loading more
fonts into memory at the expense of slower rendering.
DISKFONTS is effective only if the diskfont feature was
built into the executable; otherwise it is ignored.
-dLOCALFONTS
Causes Type 1 fonts to be loaded into the current VM -- normally local
VM -- instead of always being loaded into global VM. Useful only for
compatibility with Adobe printers for loading some obsolete fonts.
-dNOCCFONTS
Suppresses the use of fonts precompiled into the Ghostscript executable.
See "Precompiling fonts" in the
documentation on fonts for details. This is probably useful only for
debugging.
-dNOFONTMAP
Suppresses the normal loading of the Fontmap file. This may be useful
in environments without a file system.
-dNOFONTPATH
Suppresses consultation of GS_FONTPATH. This may be
useful for debugging.
-dNOPLATFONTS
Disables the use of fonts supplied by the underlying platform (X
Windows or Microsoft Windows). This may be needed if the platform fonts
look undesirably different from the scalable fonts.
-sFONTMAP=filename1;filename2;...
Specifies alternate name or names for the Fontmap file. Note that the
names are separated by ":" on Unix systems, by
";" on MS Windows systems, and by
"," on VMS systems, just as for search paths.
-sFONTPATH=dir1;dir2;...
Specifies a list of directories that will be scanned when looking for
fonts not found on the search path, overriding the environment variable
GS_FONTPATH.
-sSUBSTFONT=fontname
Causes the given font to be substituted for all unknown fonts, instead
of using the normal intelligent substitution algorithm. Also, in this
case, the font returned by findfont is the actual font
named fontname, not a copy of the font with its
FontName changed to the requested one.
THIS OPTION SHOULD NOT BE USED WITH HIGH LEVEL DEVICES, such as
pdfwrite, because it prevents such devices from
providing the original font names in the output document. The
font specified (fontname) will be embedded instead,
limiting all future users of the document to the same approximate
rendering.
Resource-related parameters
-sGenericResourceDir=path
Specifies a path to resource files.
The value is platform dependent. It must end with a directory separator.
Adobe specifies GenericResourceDir to be an absolute path
to a single resource directory. Ghostscript instead maintains
multiple resource directories and uses an extended method for finding
resources, which is explained in
"Finding PostScript Level 2 resources".
Due to the extended search method, Ghostscript uses GenericResourceDir
only as a default directory for resources being not installed.
Therefore GenericResourceDir may be considered as a place
where new resources to be installed. The default implementation of the function
ResourceFileName uses GenericResourceDir when
(1) it is an absolute path, or (2) the resource file is absent.
The extended search method does not call ResourceFileName .
Default value is (./Resource/) for Unix, and an equivalent one on other
platforms.
-sFontResourceDir=path
Specifies a path where font files are installed.
It's meaning is similar to GenericResourceDir.
Default value is (./Font/) for Unix, and an equivalent one on other
platforms.
Interaction-related parameters
-dBATCH
Causes Ghostscript to exit after processing all files named on the
command line, rather than going into an interactive loop reading PostScript
commands. Equivalent to putting -c quit at the end of the command line.
-dNOPAGEPROMPT
Disables only the prompt, but not the pause, at the end of each page.
This may be useful on PC displays that get confused if a program attempts
to write text to the console while the display is in a graphics mode.
-dNOPAUSE
Disables the prompt and pause at the end of each page. Normally one
should use this (along with -dBATCH) when producing output
on a printer or to a file; it also may be desirable for applications where
another program is "driving" Ghostscript.
-dNOPROMPT
Disables the prompt printed by Ghostscript when it expects interactive
input, as well as the end-of-page prompt (-dNOPAGEPROMPT);
also disables the implicit flushpage that normally occurs
each time Ghostscript asks for more input. This allows piping input
directly into Ghostscript, as long as the data doesn't refer to
currentfile.
-dQUIET
Suppresses routine information comments on standard output. This is
currently necessary when redirecting device output to standard output.
-dSHORTERRORS
Makes certain error and information messages more Adobe-compatible.
-sstdout=filename
Redirect PostScript %stdout to a file or
stderr, to avoid it being mixed with device stdout.
To redirect stdout to stderr use -sstdout=%stderr.
To cancel redirection of stdout use -sstdout=%stdout
or -sstdout=-.
-dTTYPAUSE
Causes Ghostscript to read a character from /dev/tty,
rather than standard input, at the end of each page. This may be useful if
input is coming from a pipe. Note that -dTTYPAUSE
overrides -dNOPAUSE.
Device and output selection parameters
-dNODISPLAY
Initializes Ghostscript with a null device (a device that discards the
output image) rather than the default device or the device selected with
-sDEVICE=. This is usually useful only when running
PostScript code whose purpose is to compute something rather than to
produce an output image; for instance, when converting PostScript to PDF.
Selects an alternate output file (or pipe) for the initial output
device, as described above.
EPS parameters
-dEPSCrop
Crop an EPS file to the bounding box.
This is useful when converting an EPS file to a bitmap.
-dEPSFitPage
Resize an EPS file to fit the page.
This is useful for enlarging an EPS file to fit the paper size when printing.
-dNOEPS
Prevent special processing of EPS files.
This is useful when EPS files have incorrect Document
Structuring Convention comments.
Other parameters
-dDELAYBIND
Causes bind to remember all its invocations, but not
actually execute them until the .bindnow procedure is
called. Useful only for certain specialized packages like
pstotext that redefine operators. See the documentation
for .bindnow for more information
on using this feature.
-dDOPDFMARKS
Causes pdfmark to be called for bookmarks,
annotations, links and cropbox when processing PDF files.
Normally, pdfmark is only called for these types
for PostScript files or when the output device requests it
(e.g. pdfwrite device).
-dJOBSERVER
Define \004 (^D) to start a new encapsulated job used for
compatibility with Adobe PS Interpreters that ordinarily run under a job
server. The -dNOOUTERSAVE switch is ignored if -dJOBSERVER
is specified since job servers always execute the input PostScript
under a save level, although the exitserver operator can
be used to escape from the encapsulated job and execute as if the
-dNOOUTERSAVE was specified.
This also requires that the input be from stdin, otherwise an error will
result (Error: /invalidrestore in --restore--).
Note: The ^D does not result in an end-of-file action
on stdin as it may on some PostScript printers that rely on TBCP (Tagged
Binary Communication Protocol) to cause an out-of-band ^D to
signal EOF in a stream input data. This means that direct file actions
on stdin such as flushfile and closefile
will affect processing of data beyond the ^D in the stream.
-dNOBIND
Disables the bind operator. Useful only for debugging.
-dNOCACHE
Disables character caching. Useful only for debugging.
-dNOGC
Suppresses the initial automatic enabling of the garbage collector in
Level 2 systems. (The vmreclaim operator is not disabled.)
Useful only for debugging.
-dNOOUTERSAVE
Suppresses the initial save that is used for compatibility with Adobe
PS Interpreters that ordinarily run under a job server. If a job server is
going to be used to set up the outermost save level, then -dNOOUTERSAVE
should be used so that the restore between jobs will restore global VM as
expected.
-dNOSAFER (equivalent to -dDELAYSAFER).
This flag disables SAFER mode until the .setsafe
procedure is run. This is intended for clients or scripts that cannot
operate in SAFER mode. If Ghostscript is started with -dNOSAFER
or -dDELAYSAFER, PostScript programs are allowed to read, write,
rename or delete any files in the system that are not protected by operating
system permissions.
This mode should be used with caution, and .setsafe should be
run prior to running any PostScript file with unknown contents.
-dSAFER
Disables the deletefile and renamefile
operators, and the ability to open piped commands (%pipe%cmd)
at all. Only %stdout and %stderr can be opened
for writing. Disables reading of files other than %stdin,
those given as a command line argument, or those contained on one of the paths
given by LIBPATH and FONTPATH and specified by the system params /FontResourceDir
and /GenericResourceDir.
This mode also sets the .LockSafetyParams
parameter of the default device, or the device specified with the -sDEVICE=
switch to protect against programs that attempt to write to files using the
OutputFile device parameter. Note that since the device parameters specified
on the command line (including OutputFile) are set prior to SAFER mode,
the -sOutputFile=... on the command line is unrestricted.
SAFER mode also prevents changing the /GenericResourceDir, /FontResourceDir
and either the /SystemParamsPassword or the /StartJobPassword.
Note: While SAFER mode is not the default, in a subsequent release of
Ghostscript, SAFER mode will be the default thus scripts or programs that need
to open files or set restricted parameters will require the -dNOSAFER
command line option.
When running -dNOSAFER it is possible to perform a save,
followed by .setsafe, execute a file or procedure in SAFER mode,
then use restore to return to NOSAFER mode. In order to prevent
the save object from being restored by the foreign file or procedure, the
.runandhide operator should
be used to hide the save object from the restricted procedure.
-dSTRICT
Disables as many Ghostscript extensions as feasible, to be more helpful
in debugging applications that produce output for Adobe and other RIPs.
-dWRITESYSTEMDICT
Leaves systemdict writable. This is necessary when
running special utility programs such as font2c and
pcharstr, which must bypass normal PostScript access
protection.
Improving performance
Ghostscript attempts to find an optimum balance between speed and memory
consumption, but there are some cases in which you may get a very large
speedup by telling Ghostscript to use more memory.
If you are using X Windows, setting the -dMaxBitmap=
parameter described above may
dramatically improve performance on files that have a lot of bitmap images.
If you are using Chinese, Japanese, or other fonts with very large character
sets, adding the following sequence of switches before the first file name
may dramatically improve performance at the cost of an additional 2-3 Mb of
memory: -c 3000000 setvmthreshold -f. This
can also be useful in processing large documents when using a high-level
output device (like pdfwrite) that maintains significant internal state.
In fact, the .setpdfwrite
operator used by the ps2pdf script and others sets a vmthreshold value of
3 MB to account for this.
Summary of environment variables
GS, GSC (MS Windows only)
Specify the names of the Ghostscript executables. GS
brings up a new typein window and possibly a graphics window;
GSC uses the DOS console. If these are not set,
GS defaults to gswin32, and
GSC defaults to gswin32c.
Provides a search path for initialization files and fonts.
GS_OPTIONS
Defines a list of command-line arguments to be processed before the
ones actually specified on the command line. For example, setting
GS_DEVICE to XYZ is equivalent to setting
GS_OPTIONS to -sDEVICE=XYZ. The contents
of GS_OPTIONS are not limited to switches; they may include
actual file names or even "@file" arguments.
Defines a directory name for temporary files. If both
TEMP and TMPDIR are defined,
TMPDIR takes precedence.
Debugging
The information here describing is probably interesting only to developers.
Debug switches
There are several debugging switches that are detected by the interpreter.
These switches are available whether or not Ghostscript was built with the
DEBUG macro defined to the compiler (refer to
building a debugging configuration).
Previous to 8.10, there was a single DEBUG flag, enabled with -dDEBUG
on the command line. Now there are several debugging flags to allow
more selective debugging information to be printed containing only what is
needed to investigate particular areas. For backward compatibilty, the
-dDEBUG option will set all of the subset switches.
-dCCFONTDEBUG
Compiled Fonts
-dCFFDEBUG
CFF Fonts
-dCMAPDEBUG
CMAP
-dDOCIEDEBUG
CIE color
-dEPSDEBUG
EPS handling
-dFAPIDEBUG
Font API
-dINITDEBUG
Initialization
-dPDFDEBUG
PDF Interpreter
-dPDFOPTDEBUG
PDF Optimizer (Linearizer)
-dPDFWRDEBUG
PDF Writer
-dSETPDDEBUG
setpagedevice
-dSTRESDEBUG
Static Resources
-dTTFDEBUG
TTF Fonts
-dVGIFDEBUG
ViewGIF
-dVJPGDEBUG
ViewJPEG
The -Z and -T switches apply only
if the interpreter was built for a debugging
configuration. In the table below, the first column is a debugging
switch, the second is an equivalent switch (if any) and the third is its
usage.
Switches used in debugging
Switch
Equivalent
-A
-Z@
Fill empty storage with a distinctive bit pattern for debugging
-A-
-Z-@
Turn off -A
-Bsize
Run all subsequent files named on the command line (except for
-F) through the run_string interface, using a
buffer of size bytes
-B-
Turn off -B: run subsequent files (except for
-F) directly in the normal way
-E
-Z#
Turn on tracing of error returns from operators
-E-
-Z-#
Turn off -E
-Ffile
Execute the file with -B1 temporarily in effect
-Kn
Limit the total amount of memory that the interpreter can have
allocated at any one time to nK bytes.
n is a positive decimal integer.
-Mn
Force the interpreter's allocator to acquire additional memory
in units of nK bytes, rather than the default
(currently 20K on DOS systems, 50K on Unix). n
is a positive decimal integer, on DOS systems no greater than
63.
-Nn
Allocate space for nK names, rather than the
default (normally 64K). n may be greater than
64 only if EXTEND_NAMES was defined when the
interpreter was compiled .
-Zxxx -Z-xxx
Turn debugging printout on (off). Each of the xxx
characters selects an option. Case is significant: "a" and
"A" have different meanings.
0
garbage collector, minimal detail
1
type 1 and type 42 font interpreter
2
curve subdivider/rasterizer
3
curve subdivider/rasterizer, detail
4
garbage collector (strings)
5
garbage collector (strings, detail)
6
garbage collector (chunks, roots)
7
garbage collector (objects)
8
garbage collector (refs)
9
garbage collector (pointers)
a
allocator (large blocks only)
A
allocator (all calls)
b
bitmap image processor
B
bitmap images, detail
c
color/halftone mapper
d
dictionary put/undef
D
dictionary lookups
e
external (OS-related) calls
f
fill algorithm (summary)
F
fill algorithm (detail)
g
gsave/grestore[all]
h
halftone renderer
H
halftones, every pixel
i
interpreter, just names
I
interpreter, everything
j
(Japanese) composite fonts
k
character cache and xfonts
K
character cache, every access
l
command lists, bands
L
command lists, everything
m
makefont and font cache
n
name lookup (new names only)
o
outliner (stroke)
O
stroke detail
p
band list paths
P
all paths
q
clipping
r
arc renderer
s
streams
S
scanner
t
tiling algorithm
u
undo saver (for save/restore), finalization
U
undo saver, more detail
v
alpha/transparency
V
alpha/transparency, more detail
w
compression encoder/decoder
x
transformations
y
Type 1 hints
Y
Type 1 hints, every access
z
trapezoid fill
#
operator error returns
%
externally processed comments
*
image and RasterOp parameters
:
command list and allocator/time summary
~
math functions and Functions
'
contexts, create/destroy
"
contexts, every operation
^
reference counting
_
high-level output
|
(reserved for experimental code)
The following switch affects what is printed, but does not select specific
items for printing:
/
include file name and line number on all trace output
These switches select debugging options other than what should be printed:
$
set unused parts of object references to
identifiable garbage values
+
use minimum-size stack blocks
,
don't use path-based banding
`
don't use high-level banded images
.
use small-memory table sizes even on large-memory
machines
?
validate pointers before, during and after garbage
collection, also before and after save and restore; also make other
allocator validity checks
@
fill newly allocated, garbage-collected, and freed
storage with a marker (a1, c1, and f1 respectively)
-Txxx -T-xxx
Turn Visual Trace on (off). Each of the xxx
characters selects an option. Case is significant: "f" and
"F" have different meanings.
f
filling algorithm
Visual Trace
Visual Trace allows to view internal Ghostscript data in a graphical form
while execution of C code. Special
instructions to be inserted into
C code for generating the output. Client application
rasterizes it into a window.
Currently the rasterization is implemented for Windows only, in clients
gswin32.exe and gswin32c.exe. They open Visual Trace window when graphical
debug output appears, -Tswitch is set,
and Ghostscript was built with DEBUG option.
There are two important incompletenesses of the implementation :
1. The graphical output uses a hardcoded scale. An advanced client
would provide a scale option via user interface.
2. Breaks are not implemented in the client. If you need a step-by-step
view, you should use an interactive C debugger to delay execution at breakpoints.
Appendix: Paper sizes known to Ghostscript
The paper sizes known to Ghostscript are defined at the beginning of the
initialization file gs_statd.ps; see the comments there for
more details about the definitions. The table here lists them by name and
size. gs_statd.ps defines their sizes exactly in points,
and the dimensions in inches (at 72 points per inch) and centimeters shown
in the table are derived from those, rounded to the nearest 0.1 unit. A
guide to international paper sizes can be found at
*Note: Initially the B paper sizes are the ISO sizes, e.g.,
b0 is the same as isob0. Running the file
lib/jispaper.ps makes the B paper sizes be the JIS sizes,
e.g., b0 becomes the same as jisb0.
For Sun's X11/NeWS one can use the OpenWindows scalable fonts instead,
which gives good output for any point size. In this environment, the
relevant section of the resource file should look like this:
Font API (FAPI) is a new feature which allows to attach 3d party font renderers to Ghostscript.
This section explains how to run Ghostscript with 3d party font renderers,
such as Agfa UFST or Free Type.
Note: To run Ghostscript with Agfa UFST you need a license from Agfa.
Please ignore issues about UFST if you haven't got it.
Important note: Third-party font renderers are incompatible
with devices that can embed fonts in their output (such as pdfwrite),
because such renderers store fonts in a form from which Ghostscript cannot
get the necessary information for embedding. Ghostscript disables such
renderers when such device is being used. In particular, UFST and Free Type are
disabled while running Ghostscript with the pdfwrite
device.
To run Ghostscript with UFST, you first need to build Ghostscript
with the UFST bridge. Refer How to build Ghostscript with UFST.
Both bridges may run together.
Then you need to obtain the Decoding resources from Artifex Software Inc. and install them with Ghostscript.
Just copy the files to the Resource/Decoding directory (or to the subdirectory
Decoding of a directory, which is specified in GenericResourcePath).
There are 2 ways to handle fonts with a 3d party font renderer (FAPI). First, you can substitute
any FAPI-handled font to a PostScript font, using special map files.
Second, you can redirect PostScript fonts to FAPI, setting
entries in lib/FAPIconfig file.
The file lib/FAPIfontmap defines a map table for FAPI-handled fonts.
The format of lib/FAPIfontmap is explained below.
Font files being handled with FAPI may reside in any directory in your hard disk.
Paths to them to be specified in lib/FAPIfontmap. The path may be either
absolute or relative. Relative ones are being resolved from the path,
which is specified in lib/FAPIconfig file.
The file lib/FAPIfontmap is actually special PostScript code.
It contains records for each font being rendered with FAPI.
Records must end with semicolon. Each record is a pair.
The first element of the pair is the font name (the name that PostScript
documents use to access the font, which may differ
from real name of the font which the font file defines).
The second element is a dictionary with entries :
Key
Type
Description
Path
string
Absolute path to font file, or relative path to font file from the FontPath value,
being specified in lib/FAPIconfig.
FontType
interger
PostScript type for this font. Only 1 and 42 are currently allowed.
Note that this is unrelated to the real type of the font file -
the bridge will perform a format conversion.
FAPI
name
Name of the renderer to be used with the font.
Only /AgfaUFST and /FreeType are now allowed.
SubfontId
integer
(optional) Index of the font in font collection, such as FCO or TTC.
It is being ignored if Path doesn't specify a collection.
Note that Free Type can't handle FCO.
Default value is 0.
Decoding
name
(optional) The name of a Decoding resource to be used with the font.
If specified, lib/xlatmap (see below) doesn't work for this font.
Note that lib/FAPIfontmap specifies only instances of
Font category. CID fonts to be listed in another map file.
The file lib/FAPIcidfmap defines a mapping table for
CIDFont resources. It contains records for each CID font being rendered with FAPI.
The format is similar to lib/FAPIfontmap,
but dictionaries must contain few different entries :
Key
Type
Description
Path
string
Absolute path to font file, or relative path to font file from the CIDFontPath value,
being specified in lib/FAPIconfig.
CIDFontType
interger
PostScript type for this CID font. Only 0, 1 and 2 are currently allowed.
Note that this is unrelated to the real type of the font file -
the bridge will perform format conversion.
FAPI
name
Name of the renderer to be used with the font.
Only /AgfaUFST and /FreeType are now allowed.
SubfontId
integer
(optional) Index of the font in font collection, such as FCO or TTC.
It is being ignored if Path doesn't specify a collection.
Default value is 0.
CSI
array of 2 elements
(required) Information for building CIDSystemInfo.
The first element is a string, which specifies Ordering.
The second element is a number, which specifies Supplement.
The control file lib/FAPIconfig defines 4 entries :
Key
Type
Description
FontPath
string
Absolute path to a directory, which contains fonts. Used to resolve
relative paths in lib/FAPIfontmap.
CIDFontPath
string
Absolute path to a directory, which contains fonts to substitute to CID fonts.
Used to resolve relative paths in lib/FAPIcidfmap.
It may be same or different than FontPath.
HookDiskFonts
array of integers.
List of PS font types to be handled with FAPI.
This controls other fonts that ones listed in lib/FAPIfontmap
and lib/FAPIcidfmap - such ones are PS fonts installed to
Ghostscript with lib/fontmap or with GS_FONTPATH,
or regular CID font resources. Unlisted font types will be
rendered with the native Ghostscript font renderer.
Only allowed values now are 1,9,11,42. Note that 9 and 11
correspond to CIDFontType 0 and 2.
HookEmbeddedFonts
array of integers.
List of PS font types to be handled with FAPI.
This controls fonts being embedded into a document -
either fonts or CID font resources. Unlisted font types will be
rendered with the native Ghostscript font renderer.
Only allowed values now are 1,9,11,42. Note that 9 and 11
correspond to CIDFontType 0 and 2.
You may need to customize the file lib/xlatmap. Follow instructions in it.
Note that UFST and Free Type cannot handle some Ghostscript fonts because
they does not include a PostScript interpreter and therefore has stronger restrictions on
font formats than Ghostscript itself does.
If their font types are listed in HookDiskFonts or in HookEmbeddedFonts,
Ghostscript interpret them as PS files, then serializes font data into a RAM buffer and
passes it to FAPI as PCLEOs.
This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or
implied.
This software is distributed under license and may not be copied,
modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms
of the license contained in the file LICENSE in this distribution.
For more information about licensing, please refer to
http://www.ghostscript.com/licensing/. For information on
commercial licensing, go to http://www.artifex.com/licensing/ or
contact Artifex Software, Inc., 101 Lucas Valley Road #110,
San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861.