gs
(1)
Name
gs - Ghostscript (PostScript and PDF language interpreter
and previewer)
Synopsis
gs [ options ] [ files ] ... (Unix, VMS)
gswin32c [ options ] [ files ] ... (MS Windows)
gswin32 [ options ] [ files ] ... (MS Windows 3.1)
gsos2 [ options ] [ files ] ... (OS/2)
Description
Ghostscript GS(1)
NAME
gs - Ghostscript (PostScript and PDF language interpreter
and previewer)
SYNOPSIS
gs [ options ] [ files ] ... (Unix, VMS)
gswin32c [ options ] [ files ] ... (MS Windows)
gswin32 [ options ] [ files ] ... (MS Windows 3.1)
gsos2 [ options ] [ files ] ... (OS/2)
DESCRIPTION
The gs (gswin32c, gswin32, gsos2) command invokes
Ghostscript, an interpreter of Adobe Systems' PostScript(tm)
and Portable Document Format (PDF) languages. gs reads
"files" in sequence and executes them as Ghostscript pro-
grams. After doing this, it reads further input from the
standard input stream (normally the keyboard), interpreting
each line separately. The interpreter exits gracefully when
it encounters the "quit" command (either in a file or from
the keyboard), at end-of-file, or at an interrupt signal
(such as Control-C at the keyboard).
The interpreter recognizes many option switches, some of
which are described below. Please see the usage documenta-
tion for complete information. Switches may appear anywhere
in the command line and apply to all files thereafter.
Invoking Ghostscript with the -h or -? switch produces a
message which shows several useful switches, all the devices
known to that executable, and the search path for fonts; on
Unix it also shows the location of detailed documentation.
Ghostscript may be built to use many different output
devices. To see which devices your executable includes, run
"gs -h". Unless you specify a particular device,
Ghostscript normally opens the first one of those and
directs output to it, so if the first one in the list is the
one you want to use, just issue the command
gs myfile.ps
You can also check the set of available devices from within
Ghostscript: invoke Ghostscript and type
devicenames ==
but the first device on the resulting list may not be the
default device you determine with "gs -h". To specify
"AbcXyz" as the initial output device, include the switch
-sDEVICE=AbcXyz
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Ghostscript GS(1)
For example, for output to an Epson printer you might use
the command
gs -sDEVICE=epson myfile.ps
The "-sDEVICE=" switch must precede the first mention of a
file to print, and only the switch's first use has any
effect.
Finally, you can specify a default device in the environment
variable GS_DEVICE. The order of precedence for these
alternatives from highest to lowest (Ghostscript uses the
device defined highest in the list) is:
Some devices can support different resolutions (densities).
To specify the resolution on such a printer, use the "-r"
switch:
gs -sDEVICE=<device> -r<xres>x<yres>
For example, on a 9-pin Epson-compatible printer, you get
the lowest-density (fastest) mode with
gs -sDEVICE=epson -r60x72
and the highest-density (best output quality) mode with
gs -sDEVICE=epson -r240x72.
If you select a printer as the output device, Ghostscript
also allows you to choose where Ghostscript sends the output
-- on Unix systems, usually to a temporary file. To send
the output to a file "foo.xyz", use the switch
-sOutputFile=foo.xyz
You might want to print each page separately. To do this,
send the output to a series of files "foo1.xyz, foo2.xyz,
..." using the "-sOutputFile=" switch with "%d" in a file-
name template:
-sOutputFile=foo%d.xyz
Each resulting file receives one page of output, and the
files are numbered in sequence. "%d" is a printf format
specification; you can also use a variant like "%02d".
On Unix and MS Windows systems you can also send output to a
pipe. For example, to pipe output to the "lpr" command
(which, on many Unix systems, directs it to a printer), use
the option
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Ghostscript GS(1)
-sOutputFile=%pipe%lpr
Note that the '%' characters need to be doubled on MS Win-
dows to avoid mangling by the command interpreter.
You can also send output to standard output:
-sOutputFile=-
or
-sOutputFile=%stdout%
In this case you must also use the -q switch, to prevent
Ghostscript from writing messages to standard output.
To select a specific paper size, use the command line switch
-sPAPERSIZE=<paper_size>
for instance
-sPAPERSIZE=a4
or
-sPAPERSIZE=legal
Most ISO and US paper sizes are recognized. See the usage
documentation for a full list, or the definitions in the
initialization file "gs_statd.ps".
Ghostscript can do many things other than print or view
PostScript and PDF files. For example, if you want to know
the bounding box of a PostScript (or EPS) file, Ghostscript
provides a special "device" that just prints out this infor-
mation.
For example, using one of the example files distributed with
Ghostscript,
gs -sDEVICE=bbox golfer.ps
prints out
%%BoundingBox: 0 25 583 732
%%HiResBoundingBox: 0.808497 25.009496 582.994503 731.809445
OPTIONS
-- 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 "ARGU-
MENTS" in "userdict" (not "systemdict") as an array of
those strings, before running the file. When
Ghostscript finishes executing the file, it exits back
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to the shell.
-Dname=token
-dname=token
Define a name in "systemdict" with the given defini-
tion. The token must be exactly one token (as defined
by the "token" operator) and may contain no whitespace.
-Dname
-dname
Define a name in "systemdict" with value=null.
-Sname=string
-sname=string
Define a name in "systemdict" with a given string as
value. This is different from -d. For example,
-dname=35 is equivalent to the program fragment
/name 35 def
whereas -sname=35 is equivalent to
/name (35) def
-P Makes Ghostscript to look first in the current direc-
tory for library files. By default, Ghostscript no
longer looks in the current directory, unless, of
course, the first explicitly supplied directory is "."
in -I. See also the INITIALIZATION FILES section
below, and bundled Use.htm for detailed discussion on
search paths and how Ghostcript finds files.
-q Quiet startup: suppress normal startup messages, and
also do the equivalent of -dQUIET.
-gnumber1xnumber2
Equivalent to -dDEVICEWIDTH=number1 and -dDEVICE-
HEIGHT=number2. This is for the benefit of devices
(such as X11 windows) that require (or allow) width and
height to be specified.
-rnumber
-rnumber1xnumber2
Equivalent to -dDEVICEXRESOLUTION=number1 and -dDE-
VICEYRESOLUTION=number2. This is for the benefit of
devices such as printers that support multiple X and Y
resolutions. If only one number is given, it is used
for both X and Y resolutions.
-Idirectories
Adds the designated list of directories at the head of
the search path for library files.
- This is not really a switch, but indicates to
Ghostscript that standard input is coming from a file
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or a pipe and not interactively from the command line.
Ghostscript reads from standard input until it reaches
end-of-file, executing it like any other file, and then
continues with processing the command line. When the
command line has been entirely processed, Ghostscript
exits rather than going into its interactive mode.
Note that the normal initialization file "gs_init.ps" makes
"systemdict" read-only, so the values of names defined with
-D, -d, -S, or -s cannot be changed (although, of course,
they can be superseded by definitions in "userdict" or other
dictionaries.)
SPECIAL NAMES
-dDISKFONTS
Causes individual character outlines to be loaded from
the disk the first time they are encountered. (Nor-
mally Ghostscript loads all the character outlines when
it loads a font.) This may allow loading more fonts
into RAM, at the expense of slower rendering.
-dNOCACHE
Disables character caching. Useful only for debugging.
-dNOBIND
Disables the "bind" operator. Useful only for debug-
ging.
-dNODISPLAY
Suppresses the normal initialization of the output
device. This may be useful when debugging.
-dNOPAUSE
Disables the prompt and pause at the end of each page.
This may be desirable for applications where another
program is driving Ghostscript.
-dNOPLATFONTS
Disables the use of fonts supplied by the underlying
platform (for instance X Windows). This may be needed
if the platform fonts look undesirably different from
the scalable fonts.
-dSAFER
Disables the "deletefile" and "renamefile" operators
and the ability to open files in any mode other than
read-only. This strongly recommended for spoolers,
conversion scripts or other sensitive environments
where a badly written or malicious PostScript program
code must be prevented from changing important files.
-dWRITESYSTEMDICT
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Leaves "systemdict" writable. This is necessary when
running special utility programs such as font2c and
pcharstr, which must bypass normal PostScript access
protection.
-sDEVICE=device
Selects an alternate initial output device, as
described above.
-sOutputFile=filename
Selects an alternate output file (or pipe) for the ini-
tial output device, as described above.
FILES
The locations of many Ghostscript run-time files are com-
piled into the executable when it is built. On Unix these
are typically based in /usr/local, but this may be different
on your system. Under DOS they are typically based in
C:\GS, but may be elsewhere, especially if you install
Ghostscript with GSview. Run "gs -h" to find the location
of Ghostscript documentation on your system, from which you
can get more details.
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/#.##/*
Startup files, utilities, and basic font definitions
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/*
More font definitions
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/#.##/examples/*
Ghostscript demonstration files
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/#.##/doc/*
Diverse document files
INITIALIZATION FILES
When looking for the initialization files "gs_*.ps", the
files related to fonts, or the file for the "run" operator,
Ghostscript first tries to open the file with the name as
given, using the current working directory if no directory
is specified. If this fails, and the file name doesn't
specify an explicit directory or drive (for instance,
doesn't contain "/" on Unix systems or "\" on MS Windows
systems), Ghostscript tries directories in this order:
1. the directories specified by the -I switches in the com-
mand line (see below), if any;
2. the directories specified by the GS_LIB environment
variable, if any;
3. the directories specified by the GS_LIB_DEFAULT macro in
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the Ghostscript makefile when the executable was built.
When gs is built on Unix, GS_LIB_DEFAULT is usually
"/usr/local/share/ghostscript/#.##:/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts"
where "#.##" represents the Ghostscript version number.
Each of these (GS_LIB_DEFAULT, GS_LIB, and -I parameter) may
be either a single directory or a list of directories sepa-
rated by ":".
ENVIRONMENT
GS_OPTIONS
String of options to be processed before the command
line options
GS_DEVICE
Used to specify an output device
GS_FONTPATH
Path names used to search for fonts
GS_LIB
Path names for initialization files and fonts
TEMP Where temporary files are made
X RESOURCES
Ghostscript, or more properly the X11 display device, looks
for the following resources under the program name
"Ghostscript":
borderWidth
The border width in pixels (default = 1).
borderColor
The name of the border color (default = black).
geometry
The window size and placement, WxH+X+Y (default is
NULL).
xResolution
The number of x pixels per inch (default is computed
from WidthOfScreen and WidthMMOfScreen).
yResolution
The number of y pixels per inch (default is computed
from HeightOfScreen and HeightMMOfScreen).
useBackingPixmap
Determines whether backing store is to be used for sav-
ing display window (default = true).
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See the usage document for a more complete list of
resources. To set these resources on Unix, put them in a
file such as "~/.Xresources" in the following form:
Ghostscript*geometry: 612x792-0+0
Ghostscript*xResolution: 72
Ghostscript*yResolution: 72
Then merge these resources into the X server's resource
database:
% xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+--------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Availability | print/filter/ghostscript |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Stability | Volatile |
+---------------+--------------------------+
SEE ALSO
The various Ghostscript document files (above), especially
Use.htm.
BUGS
See http://bugs.ghostscript.com/ and the Usenet news group
comp.lang.postscript.
VERSION
This document was last revised for Ghostscript version 9.00.
AUTHOR
Artifex Software, Inc. are the primary maintainers of
Ghostscript. Russell J. Lang, gsview at ghostgum.com.au, is
the author of most of the MS Windows code in Ghostscript.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://ghostscript.com/releases/ghostscript-9.00.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://ghostscript.com/.
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