Talk:Ghostscript

Origin of tiger.eps? (aka "cubic spline tiger")

I wonder if the tiger.eps file (a.k.a. "cubic spline tiger") that comes with Ghostscript is worthy of note in this article (see http://www.levien.com/svg/ for the image I'm referring to). The file seems to have taken on a life of its own, as it seems to be the standard test image of just about every piece of vector graphics software out there (especially SVG software). I would write something about it, but I'm very fuzzy on the details. In particular:

• Did it originate with Ghostscript?
• Is it an original work of Aladdin Software, or is it derived from an older public domain source?
• Is the information in the header correct? (e.g. CreationDate: 4/12/90 3:20 AM)
• Who created it?

Here's the source code for tiger.eps from ghostscript.com. Anyone with more knowledge on the subject up for taking a crack at it? -- RobLa 07:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The earliest Ghostscript version containing the tiger I could dig up is version 2.6.1 (5/28/93). Get it from http://ftp.se.scene.org/pub/slackware/slackware-1.1.2/ap2/ghostscr.tgz . The image itself contains the comment %%CreationDate: 4/12/90 3:20 AM, so the earliest possible Ghostscript version that can contain it is 2.0 (released on 9/12/90) -- but I wasn't able to download that Ghostscript. There is indicated copyright. The only description is found in the Ghostscript history.doc file, saying tiger.ps - A dramatic colored picture of a tiger's head.

I uploaded it as an SVG. Ghostscript is GPL, so the tiger must be so too. --Ysangkok (talk) 18:13, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Some internet sites suggest it is Michael Scaramozzino's work. His contact info is here: http://www.dreamlight.com/about/ 74.240.193.187 (talk) 10:52, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The first appearance I saw of it was as part of Sun Microsystems' SunOS. It was often under /usr/openwin/share/images/PostScript/tiger.ps - one Internet site has it at demos_sun_software/xnews/demo/postscript/tiger.ps size 79844, 1989-Nov-20 (as is everything on that CD). It seems the original is tiger.ps not tiger.eps. —Hobart (talk) 06:36, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I emailed some former Sun Microsystems / Adobe people, and this is what I got... "I had a little fun circulating that image to some old friends, many still at Adobe, who were the design team, most of whom were there from very early on (1985, 1986). Nobody knew who drew that image, but we think it came out of a batch of interns who worked at Adobe around 1990 who were testing both Illustrator itself and the process of design/print. That it was drawn with a development version of Illustrator (1.2d1) supports that theory. Suspect that people liked that image better than the others and it got forwarded around.". So... if someone knows Adobe interns, that's the best lead :-) —Hobart (talk) 20:16, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

CutePDF Adware?

Is there a source of for the assertion that CutePDF has adware? I'm not aware that it does.

Evidently a bundled plug-in at one point incorporated adware. See: [1] 12.38.23.162 21:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Application or Toolbox of APIs?

This article needs to do a better job of explaining if this is application software, or a toolbox of support modules.--69.87.193.22 13:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

What is the difference? It seems to meet both of those descriptions. Notinasnaid 13:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Export formats?

Can Ghostscript export PDF files to other file formats?--69.87.193.22 13:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a very broad question, but in general the answer is yes. If you have command-line Ghostscript, you can see how by executing devicenames ==; some of the export drivers are for printers (declj250, I'm guessing), but there are image-format drivers such as tiffpack, bmpmono, xcf, pnm, pnmraw, jpeggray, pngmono and a large list of others. The list is implicitly larger than you think, because one can export to PNM or something like it and encode to any format that ImageMagick supports. (For instance.) There's a separate tool, pstoedit, to generate vector formats if you need that. If you're asking if it can export a PDF to something like a Word document, that would be like unbaking a cookie. There are tools to do so, but they're pretty complicated, and the results aren't exactly what went into the PDF in the first place. Ghostscript does not, to my knowledge, Does that answer your question? grendel|khan 14:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

AFPL

There is much confusion about the different versions. The current version is 8.60. Which works fine with PDFCreator. But many interesting other programs such as GSView, IrfanView, and pstoedit seem to insist on an AFPL version of gs, which is now getting obsolete, it seems. What are the best ways to deal with this? Is it possible to have more than one version installed at once? Easy? What are the potential problems, and solutions? -69.87.203.2 01:54, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, even though the instructions for GSView call for AFPL gs, the current non-AFPL 8.60 seems to work OK. -69.87.203.2 02:19, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Information

Can someone please indicate where any information is available on installing Ghostscript? I have downloaded many hundreds of Ghostscript files, but no .exe files and nothing entitled 'setup' are among them. This article would be a good place to direct Wikipedia readers to information about this software if it is a significant piece of code. Some clarification of the terms 'Ghostscript', 'Ghostview', 'Ghostgum' and 'Gsview' would also be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.34.45.137 (talk) 14:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

How to turn to previous pages in Ghostscript?

I use GPL Ghostscript 8.57, and I know that one can turn to the next page by pressing the "Return" key. Does anyone know how to turn to previous pages? In other words, in addition to turning pages forward, can you turn pages backward in Ghostscript? --Roland 06:22, 8 November 2014 (UTC)