Ghostscript

Last updated
Ghostscript
Original author(s) L. Peter Deutsch
Developer(s) Artifex Software [1]
Initial releaseAugust 11, 1988;35 years ago (1988-08-11) [2]
Stable release
10.03.0 [3] / 6 March 2024;58 days ago (6 March 2024)
Repository
Written in C
Operating system Cross-platform
Type PostScript and PDF interpreter
License Dual-licensed (GNU Affero General Public License + commercial permissive exception)
Website www.ghostscript.com

Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language [4] files, for the display or printing of document pages, and the conversion between PostScript and PDF files. [5]

Contents

Features

Ghostscript can be used as a raster image processor (RIP) for raster computer printers—for instance, as an input filter of line printer daemon—or as the RIP engine behind PostScript and PDF viewers. It can also be used as a file format converter, such as PostScript to PDF converter. The ps2pdf conversion program comes with the Ghostscript distribution. [6]

Ghostscript can also serve as the back-end for PDF to raster image (png, tiff, jpeg, etc.) converter; this is often combined with a PostScript printer driver in "virtual printer" PDF creators. [7] [ citation needed ] As it takes the form of a language interpreter, Ghostscript can also be used as a general purpose programming environment.

Ghostscript has been ported to many operating systems, including Unix-like systems, classic Mac OS, OpenVMS, Microsoft Windows, Plan 9, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, OS/2, ArcaOS, Atari TOS, RISC OS and AmigaOS.

History

Ghostscript was originally written by L. Peter Deutsch for the GNU Project, and released under the GNU General Public License in 1988. [8] At the time of the initial release there was a similar commercial software product named GoScript from LaserGo. [9] Later, Deutsch formed Aladdin Enterprises to dual-license Ghostscript also under a proprietary license with an own development fork: Aladdin Ghostscript under the Aladdin Free Public License [10] (which, despite the name, is not a free software license, as it forbids commercial distribution) and GNU Ghostscript distributed with the GNU General Public License. [11] With version 8.54 in 2006, both development branches were merged again, and dual-licensed releases were still provided. [12] [13]

Ghostscript is currently owned by Artifex Software and maintained by Artifex Software employees and the worldwide user community. According to Artifex, as of version 9.03, the commercial version of Ghostscript can no longer be freely distributed for commercial purposes without purchasing a license, though the (A)GPL variant allows commercial distribution provided all code using it is released under the (A)GPL. [14] [15] [16] [17]

In February 2013, with version 9.07, Ghostscript changed its license from GPLv3 to GNU AGPL. [18] [19] which raised license compatibility questions,[ clarification needed ] for example by Debian. [20]

Starting with release 9.55.0 Ghostscript has two build-in PDF interpreters. Until spring 2022, up to Ghostscript version 9.56.1, the default PDF interpreters implementation itself was coded in PostScript. The new default PDF interpreter has been rewritten in C entirely, and is faster and more secure than its predecessor, while its interface and graphics library have not changed. [21] Scripting the new C written PDF interpreter from PostScript is still possible. [22]

Free fonts

There are several sets of free fonts supplied for Ghostscript, intended to be metrically compatible with common fonts attached with the PostScript standard. [23] [24] [25] [26] These include:

The Ghostscript fonts were developed in the PostScript Type 1 format but have been converted into the TrueType format. [27] [26] As a result, a user can install and use the Ghostscript fonts via most modern software. Furthermore, the Ghostscript fonts are used as parts of various open source applications, e.g., the Linux version of GIMP depends on Graphviz which in turn depends on the Ghostscript fonts. [33] [34] Finally, multiple open source font projects used glyphs from the Ghostscript fonts, e.g., the Latin characters of GNU FreeFont are based on Nimbus Mono L, Nimbus Roman No9 L, and Nimbus Sans L. [35] The TeX Gyre fonts are also based on 8 out of the 10 original Ghostscript typeface families. [36] The Garamond font has additionally been improved upon. [37]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Device independent file format</span> Typesetting file format

The device independent file format (DVI) is the output file format of the TeX typesetting program, designed by David R. Fuchs and implemented by Donald E. Knuth in 1982. Unlike the TeX markup files used to generate them, DVI files are not intended to be human-readable; they consist of binary data describing the visual layout of a document in a manner not reliant on any specific image format, display hardware or printer. DVI files are typically used as input to a second program which translates DVI files to graphical data. For example, most TeX software packages include a program for previewing DVI files on a user's computer display; this program is a driver. Drivers are also used to convert from DVI to popular page description languages and for printing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arial</span> Neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface

Arial is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 3.1, as well as in other Microsoft programs, Apple's macOS, and many PostScript 3 printers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Courier (typeface)</span> Monospaced slab serif font of IBM

Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface. Courier was created by IBM in the mid-1950s, and was designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler (1919–1999). The Courier name and typeface concept are in the public domain. Courier has been adapted for use as a computer font, and versions of it are installed on most desktop computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source Unicode typefaces</span>

There are Unicode typefaces which are open-source and designed to contain glyphs of all Unicode characters, or at least a broad selection of Unicode scripts. There are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the Arabeyes Arabic font. The advantage of targeting only some scripts with a font was that certain Unicode characters should be rendered differently depending on which language they are used in, and that a font that only includes the characters a certain user needs will be much smaller in file size compared to one with many glyphs. Unicode fonts in modern formats such as OpenType can in theory cover multiple languages by including multiple glyphs per character, though very few actually cover more than one language's forms of the unified Han characters.

Yet Another Previewer is the name of two different document previewing applications, one for DVI and one for PostScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Century Gothic</span> Sans-serif font family

Century Gothic is a digital sans-serif typeface in the geometric style, released by Monotype Imaging in 1990. It is a redrawn version of Monotype's own Twentieth Century, a copy of Bauer's Futura, to match the widths of ITC Avant Garde Gothic. It is an exclusively digital typeface that has never been manufactured as metal type.

Hancom is an office suite software developer in South Korea. Established in 1990, the company created Hangul, a native word processing program for the Korean language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU FreeFont</span> Font family

GNU FreeFont is a family of free OpenType, TrueType and WOFF vector fonts, implementing as much of the Universal Character Set (UCS) as possible, aside from the very large CJK Asian character set. The project was initiated in 2002 by Primož Peterlin and is now maintained by Steve White.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberation fonts</span> Open-source font superfamily

Liberation is the collective name of four TrueType font families: Liberation Sans, Liberation Sans Narrow, Liberation Serif, and Liberation Mono. These fonts are metrically compatible with the most popular fonts on the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office software package, for which Liberation is intended as a free substitute. The fonts are default in LibreOffice.

The Aladdin Free Public License, abbreviated AFPL, is a license written by L. Peter Deutsch for his Ghostscript PostScript language interpreter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nimbus Roman No. 9 L</span> Serif typeface

Nimbus Roman is a serif typeface created by URW Studio in 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nimbus Sans</span> Sans-serif typeface

Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nimbus Mono L</span> Monospace typeface

Nimbus Mono is a monospaced typeface created by URW Studio in 1984, and eventually released under the GPL and AFPL in 1996 and LPPL in 2009. In 2017, the font, alongside other Core 35 fonts, has been additionally licensed under the terms of OFL. It features Normal, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic weights, and is one of several freely licensed fonts offered by URW++. Although not exactly the same, Nimbus Mono has metrics and glyphs that are very similar to Courier and Courier New.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU General Public License</span> Series of free software licenses

The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use, and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. The licenses in the GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License, and even further distinct from the more widely-used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

CC PDF Converter was a free and open-source program that allowed users to convert documents into PDF files on Microsoft Windows operating systems, while embedding a Creative Commons license. The application leveraged RedMon and Ghostscript and was licensed under the GNU GPL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antique Olive</span> Typeface

Antique Olive is a humanist sans-serif typeface. Along the lines of Gill Sans, it was designed in the early 1960s by French typographer Roger Excoffon, an art director and former consultant to the Marseilles based Fonderie Olive. In addition to a basic weight, Antique Olive was produced in medium, condensed, wide, bold, condensed bold, extra bold, and ultra bold. The key shapes, especially the letter O, resemble an olive, which is one of the characteristics which make Excoffon's typefaces unique. It was used in the Sesame Street ending credits from 1978-1983.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MuPDF</span>

MuPDF is a free and open-source software framework written in C that implements a PDF, XPS, and EPUB parsing and rendering engine. It is used primarily to render pages into bitmaps, but also provides support for other operations such as searching and listing the table of contents and hyperlinks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">URW Type Foundry</span>

URW Type Foundry GmbH is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the development of non-Latin fonts. It has been owned by Monotype Imaging since May 2020.

Open source license litigation involves lawsuits surrounding open-source licensed software. Many of the legal rights of open source software licensors enforceable against users violating licensing agreements are untested by the U.S. legal system. Free and open source software (FOSS) is distributed under a variety of free-software licenses, which are unique among other software licenses. Legal action against open source licenses involves questions about their validity and enforceability.

References

  1. ↑ "Documentation". ghostscript.com. July 10, 2002. Archived from the original on February 28, 2018. Retrieved May 23, 2017.
  2. ↑ "History of Ghostscript versions 1.n". Archived from the original on 2007-02-08. Retrieved 2007-04-10.
  3. ↑ "Version 10.03.0 (2024-03-06)". 6 March 2024. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  4. ↑ "Ghostscript and the PostScript language". ghostscript.com. Archived from the original on 2017-09-30. Retrieved 2017-05-23.
  5. ↑ Ingo, Henrik (1 August 2006). Open Life: The Philosophy of Open Source. Lulu.com. ISBN   9781847286116 – via Google Books.
  6. ↑ "ps2pdf: PostScript-to-PDF converter". Archived from the original on 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2014-08-03.
  7. ↑ "Creating a Free PDF Writer Using Ghostscript". www.stat.tamu.edu. Retrieved 2017-06-02.
  8. ↑ "Recent changes in Ghostscript". pages.cs.wisc.edu. 2002-11-21. Archived from the original on 2016-10-25. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  9. ↑ Kraul, Chris (1989-05-02). "Printing Up a Package for Success: LaserGo Software Offers Cheaper Desktop System". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2022-09-09.
  10. ↑ "Aladdin Free Public License". Archived from the original on 2017-09-30. Retrieved 2021-03-19. (mirror)
  11. ↑ "Background information for new users of Ghostscript". pages.cs.wisc.edu.
  12. ↑ "Advogato: Blog for raph". 29 June 2017. Archived from the original on 29 June 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  13. ↑ raph (2006-06-07). "Ghostscript leading edge is now GPL!". Archived from the original on 2016-10-03. Retrieved 2021-03-19."I have some great news to report. The leading edge of Ghostscript development is now under GPL license, as is the latest release, Ghostscript 8.54."
  14. ↑ "Artifex Software Inc". Artifex Software Inc. Archived from the original on 2009-02-20. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  15. ↑ Robitaille, Jason (2009-12-04). "Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Palm". webOS Nation. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  16. ↑ "Complaint for Copyright Infringement" (PDF). 2009-12-02. p. 4: 15., p. 6: 27. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  17. ↑ "Notice of Voluntary Dismissal With Prejudice" (PDF). 2011-02-07. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  18. ↑ Liddell, Chris (2006-02-19). "[gs-devel] Ghostscript 9.07 and GhostPDL 9.07". Archived from the original on 2021-01-20. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  19. ↑ "Licensing Information". Artifex Software Inc. Archived from the original on 2014-05-12. Retrieved 2014-05-08.
  20. ↑ Jose Luis Rivas (2014-05-06). "Re: Ghostscript licensing changed to AGPL". lists.debian.org. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  21. ↑ "Ghostscript : PDFI - The NEW Ghostscript PDF Interpreter is now the default!". www.ghostscript.com. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  22. ↑ "Ghostscript and the PostScript Language - Scripting the PDF interpreter". ghostscript.com. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  23. ↑ "Debian package - gsfonts" . Retrieved 2010-04-21.
  24. ↑ "Fonts and font facilities supplied with Ghostscript". Archived from the original on 2010-06-12. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
  25. ↑ "Linux fonts (mostly X11)". 2009-08-15. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
  26. 1 2 3 "doc/pcl/urwfonts (URW fonts in TTF format)". ghostscript doc. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
  27. 1 2 ArtifexSoftware. "urw-base35-fonts". GitHub. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
  28. ↑ Finally! Good-quality free (GPL) basic-35 PostScript Type 1 fonts., archived from the original on 2002-10-23, retrieved 2010-05-06
  29. ↑ Finally! Good-quality free (GPL) basic-35 PostScript Type 1 fonts. (TXT), retrieved 2010-05-06
  30. ↑ "Fonts and TeX". 2009-12-19. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
  31. ↑ Five years after: Report on international TEX font projects (PDF), 2007, retrieved 2010-05-06
  32. ↑ "GhostPDL License". ghostscript doc. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  33. ↑ "Arch Linux - gimp" . Retrieved 2022-08-04.
  34. ↑ "Arch Linux - graphviz" . Retrieved 2022-08-04.
  35. ↑ "Gnu FreeFont: Design notes" . Retrieved 2022-07-08.
  36. ↑ "The TeX Gyre (TG) Collection of Fonts — GUST Web Presence" . Retrieved 2022-08-04.
  37. ↑ Bisson, Gaetan. "URW Garamond ttf conversions" . Retrieved 18 August 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.