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[Files] A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today!ANN.lu
Posted on 18-Jul-2003 13:25 GMT by whoosh777 (Edited on 2003-07-19 16:45:59 GMT by Teemu I. Yliselä)15 comments
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A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8.00 for 68020 compatible Amigas released today. For printing + viewing and converting PS and PDF docs, eg 24 bit rgb printing via Turboprint, 24 bit rgb Cybergraphics viewers and HAM8 viewer for AGA machines. click for full info, this program doesnt cost anything! A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8.00 released today!

This contains a major fixing of the Turboprint devices to make them compliant with Ghostscript 8. Now you can print PS and PDF in commercial quality 24 bit rgb via the Turboprint devices.

Brand new PS + PDF viewing options have been written from scratch to enable viewing in truecolour via graphics cards (Cybergraphics and hopefully Picasso too). To know if you can use these viewers type "version cybergraphics.library full" from a shell, if you get a meaningful reply then the truecolour viewers are available. The Cybergraphics viewers have only been tested in depth (with success) on 2 graphics cards and superficially on 2 other cards so problems could occur, if so email me: whoosh777@blueyonder.co.uk and I will try to fix any problems.

Also written are 6 brand new AGA viewers for PS and PDF, including a HAM8 custom screen viewer for 262144 colour viewing, also present is a colour WB viewer window.

I am interested also in feedback positive or negative of whether the viewers function on Pegasos and A1. <tr>This is an optimised FPU noixemul 68020 compile, I will do a no-FPU version over the next few days. <tr>The manual can be viewed online or downloaded via http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/atlast.html

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Comment 1whoosh18-Jul-2003 11:38 GMT
Comment 2Anonymous18-Jul-2003 11:41 GMT
Comment 3Iggy Drougge18-Jul-2003 15:12 GMT
Comment 4whoosh18-Jul-2003 17:06 GMT
Comment 5AnonX20-Jul-2003 19:00 GMT
Comment 6Anonymous20-Jul-2003 19:58 GMT
Comment 7Kulwant Bhogal21-Jul-2003 07:15 GMT
Comment 8Steve Hargreaves21-Jul-2003 12:47 GMT
Comment 9AnonX21-Jul-2003 12:52 GMT
Comment 11whoosh77721-Jul-2003 14:13 GMT
Comment 12whoosh77721-Jul-2003 19:07 GMT
Comment 13Kulwant Bhogal22-Jul-2003 12:08 GMT
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 14 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by whoosh777 on 22-Jul-2003 19:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Kulwant Bhogal):
Hello Kulwant,I will attempt to answer your question to Steve!Perhaps I will take so long that an answer from him arrives before I complete!First can I point out 2 things:1. GS8 can exist in parallel to GS510, it uses its own private assigns, this is not true of other GS'swhich all use Ghostscript: assign. GS8 deliberately has 3 private assigns gs8: gs8data: and gs8fonts: to enable parallel installs. :so you can switch between the 2 progs,2. GS8 is for free, no cost, just visit the URL in the announce,then download the manual, inside the manual are weblinks to the several archives you have to download.>Hi Steve,>> What do you get that GS5.10 doesn't offer? Improved printing via TP's PS:>> device, in real truecolour....>I thought I was getting truecolour from TP anyway. Turboprint is truecolour, but the render pathway used in GS8 is better than the one through GS5.10.DarkAngel sent me printouts done via GS510 vs GS8 and the GS8 image was absolutely stunning, perfectly smooth colour regions (no pixels), delicate + correct colour definition, sharp image definition,it was perfect. The GS510 image OTOH had visible banding artefacts as well as wrong colour definition. >In what way (specifically) is GS8 better? >Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking anything, better colours and better images on colour pages, for b/w text maybe not much difference. Faster on challenging doc pages. On a challenging page (with intricate PS code) GS8 could be 15 minutes faster than GS510 on a 68060 according to feedback. And you get better colours + better image.On a non-challenging page (eg one that renders quickly and has non-challenging image colours) then you may not notice a difference.>I would just like to be well informed before making a fairly >fundamental change to my system. Afterall TP is the only>way my Epson Stylus Photo 870 works with my Amiga. Michael Merkel one of the 2 main Turboprint testers has an Epson Stylus Photo 890 so I urge you to email him about this, his email address is in the html manual on the website.You can keep both programs installed in parallel,>> The ability to print black and white documents via TP using the extremely>> fast tp1 device in GS8.... > Are you saying I will notice an improvement in speed over GS5.10? On a challenging page you could save 15 minutes!The difference between GS5.10 and GS8 is like the difference between OS1.2 and OS3.0, a lot of work has been done speeding up the render algorithms since GS5.10.>If not that would not be a strong selling point - >because I get b&w printouts from TP anyway, Note that GS8 interprets PS levels 1,2,3GS5.10 only does levels 1,2GS8 is current with Adobe's PS and PDF specification to Nov 2002,GS5.10 will be current for the date that is output to the shell when you run it, approx 1997 I think.>I couldn't really care less if xxxdevice was used or yyydevice >was used to get there. correct! Speed and quality are what matters and on challenging docs you get both speed and quality, both colour quality and image quality vs GS5.10.>I would however be much more impressed if printouts that take 5 mins >(e.g. a 1 page letter from AmigaWriter) came out in 1 minute >instead of 5 mins at high quality.see above, >> The ability to view PS documents in true colour (on a > gfx card).>OK, might only be useful for the occasional >PDF document that APDF chokes on, dont say this till you have tried it!I view a lot of PDF directly as the viewer is so responsive,the faster your machine and the more memory you have the more stunning are the viewer features.I have 14 meg + 50MHz 68030, and use the viewer by default,I can only fantasize about what the viewer will be like on a G3.>but are you saying that GS8 can convert a 146 page PDF >document to a bitmap image and successfully display it on a >reasonably equipped Amiga (e.g. 96Mb RAM and a GFX card)? yes! 96Mb RAM is huge, I have just 14 meg: 2 meg graphics ram + 4 + 8,and have no probs,It only holds one page at a time in ram so you can have a huge bitmap page, so if you wanted to view pages 39 - 42 at 500 dpi (500 x 8.5 x 500 x 12 x 3 bytes == 76.5 meg / page ) truecolour 500dpi page would fit in your 96Mb machine you would type:set print 0set window 1set whooshsuper 0gs_2n -sDEVICE=whoosh24 -r500 -dFirstPage=39 -dLastPage=42 xyz.pdfand view in truecolour at a huge resolution. The only limiting factor is the amount of ram,so if the bitmap fits in your 96Mb you can view it!You can zoom in and scroll around the image in real time.So zoom out till it fully fits on screen or zoom in on some detail.The above example only applies to graphics cards, there are certain constraints on AGA due to graphics.library bugs,but you can do a lot on AGA as well.>How much time, on 68060 not an issue, on 68030 not too big an issue for standard monitor resolutions eg 85dpi For a G3 the time factor becomes irrelevant,>disk space and no disk space used for viewing,no disk space overhead for direct printing, If you use printer binaries then the printer binary size is not a GS issue, ie its a driver issue!>memory does such a task take? For printing the release version only has an extra 3meg overhead regardless of bitmap size,I had feedback today from a guy (Michael Evans) with A500 + 33MHz 68020 + FPU + 8Meg Ram, he told me he was printing all sorts of stuff via GS8 Turboprint which failed on GS510 Turboprint,He told me that printing via GS510 Turbo was not really an option on his setup as it is so memory hungry.GS8 is much more memory efficient, and faster!:In fact I am responding to his info by creating a 1 meg overhead version which will be even more memory efficient.Memory overhead for viewing: as much memory as you choose it to,a 24 bit rgb a4 image at 1200 dpi is 400 meg so you could only view a 96Meg subset of it, 500 dpi would swallow up most of the memory of your 96Mb example,You can lower the memory overhead by viewing in gray,here the 8 bit gray a4 1200 dpi would be 400/3 == 133 meg,still out of range,the above 500 dpi a4 in 8 bit gray would be 76.5/3 == 25 meg which would fit easily in your above example machineand viewer graphics would be 3 x as fast too!>I frequently download big (>2Mb) PDF files (technical product manuals) >and it would be nice to have something which can handle these elegantly.this is exactly where it excels,eg the manual for my printer is pdf, I forget the size but possibly 76 pages,generally I would advise you to print in 1 bit b/w and then reprint in truecolour only the interesting pages. This will save you a huge amount of time as well as precious colour ink.1 bit b/w GS8 rendering whether it be viewer or Turboprint is so much faster than 24 bit colour, 1 bit b/w will give a perfect render for solid black regions on solid white background: text, curves,for grays and colours its not so good, but is acceptible as draft quality,whoosh777
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#15 Kulwant Bhogal
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Comment 15Kulwant Bhogal22-Jul-2003 19:42 GMT
Comment 16whoosh77723-Jul-2003 15:04 GMT
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