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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

A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 1 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by whoosh on 18-Jul-2003 11:38 GMT
My announce didnt quite come out the way it
was intended, so here is the info:
1. Fully debugged Turboprint driver for
printing PS and PDF in commercial quality 24 bit colour.
2. 6 Brand new Cyber viewers, eg view a PS or PDF
doc in 24 bit colour on a WB window, or
via a 24 bit colour custom screen. Custom screen viewers
enable lower resolutions for faster graphics features.
3. 6 Brand new AGA viewers including HAM8 custom screen
PS + PDF viewer, also available are colour WB window viewers.
4. 12-bit 4096 colour AmigaOS printing of PS and PDF,
(3 Turboprint and 3 AmigaOS print methods,)
5. Understands Postscript levels 1,2,3

This is an optimised FPU noixemul 68020 compile,
a no FPU version will be made available over the next few days,

The weblink is http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/atlast.html,
here you can download or view online the html manual for this port.

The manual contains the links for the necessary downloads,
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 2 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 18-Jul-2003 11:41 GMT
This is cool thanks
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 3 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Iggy Drougge on 18-Jul-2003 15:12 GMT
Good to see that someone is keeping up the good work.
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 4 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by whoosh on 18-Jul-2003 17:06 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Iggy Drougge):
Hello!something went wrong with the announce!Perhaps continue the discussion in DarkAngel's thread!:the announce I actually made seems to have come out in his thread,moderators, if you can, when you look at the 2 threadsmake things continue down the other line,not sure what went wrong,DarkAngel is one of the 2 main Turboprint testers for thisport.whoosh777
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 5 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by AnonX on 20-Jul-2003 19:00 GMT
very cool, but why 12 viewers?
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 6 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 20-Jul-2003 19:58 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (AnonX):
AnonX said:>very cool, but why 12 viewers?good question!its complicated:Ghostscript, PS and PDF are primarily about printers,so the viewers operate by masquerading as being printers.Now the way I have done the viewers you can view ginormous bitmaps,eg Steve Hargreaves told me using the viewers on a huge expanded bitmap he had some 700kb left, and his machine has either 64meg or 128 meg,so he possibly had a 50meg bitmap or something!anyway, the problem with printer bitmaps is you are dealing with very large numbers. eg a 1200dpi a4 24 bit rgb image is some 400 meg,Now there are consequences of this, firstly the more colours you wish the greater the ram usage and the slower the viewer graphics.So it means you always have a tradeoff between image quality and memory usage + speed. eg you can multiply viewer graphics speed by a factor of 4 by halving the resolution, here you have traded in detail for speed.Now as a way out of this dilemma Ghostscript provides several totally unrelated render methods, after careful study I have selected 3 which I regard as the most useful, each involves a different tradeoff:1. 24 bit rgb render, maximum colours, truecolour, but slow and memory hungry,2. 8 bit gray: photorealism but in gray, advantage= 3 * as fast graphics as 1., and 3 * as little memory so for the a4 example above 400 meg becomes 100 meg, this is more likely to fit in a 68060 machine!3. 1 bit b/w. This looks doubtful, just a *2* colour palette, but the reason for it is its for things like my laser printer, which only understands black and white, no grays and no colours. For text only it is perfect, for some wonderful colour picture its not so good. Now the great thing about 1 bit b/w is the Ghostscript PS render is exceedingly fast. Where you have to wait for the 24 bit render, 1 bit is like instant. So from a viewer POV, if you have downloaded a 579 page PDF file eg the G3 manual, you really want speed.OK this gives you 3 viewers with different tradeoffs, 1 bit which is very fast vs 24 bit which looks really nice,however there is a further issue: resolution, super-hi-res-laced uses 8 * as much memory as lo-res, thus lo-res will be 8 * as fast but with 8 * as little detail.To give you different resolutions you need custom screens, so we get the above 3 viewers again but for custom screens.This gives us 6 viewers.Now a further problem, AGA vs graphics cards.Graphics code for graphics cards will not run on AGA,AGA graphics will not run on graphics cards.So this means 6 viewers for Cybergraphics and 6 for AGA.6 + 6 = 12!So really 12 == 2 * 2 * 3,2 for the set size of { AGA , Cyber }2 for the set size of { custom_screen, WB_viewer }3 for set size of {24 bit rgb, 8 bit gray, 1 bit b/w }giving 2 * 2 * 3 == 24.Its slightly more complicated though,printing is a highly "polymorphic" affair,each output method comes with its own quirks, so each of the above 12 needs its own separate treatment.(Likewise every single printer comes with its own quirks,each and every printer is eccentric, compare a laser with an inkjet with a dot matrix. inkjets give you eg truecolour,compare this with my ancient Star-LC 10 dot matrix with 7 colours!The advantage of Turboprint is that the product has really tuned into each and every printer that it supports, ie its quite perfectionist)For the viewers the core code is the same, but there are multiple execution paths to deal with the differences, eg a depth-8 cyber screen behaves a bit like AGA eg it has a colour palette, so depth-8 gray Cyber screen requires its own execution path different from eg depth 15,16,or 24 gray Cyber screen.: depth 8 cyber requires graphics.library vs eg depth 16 cyber requires cybergraphics.library.Now AGA cannot do 24 bit colour, so here we can use:HAM8 for pseudo 18 bit (64 * 64 * 64) colour HAM8 needs its own private code because it is so wierd,many specific tricks are needed to eliminate lurid HAM8 artefacts which could happen on scrolling a HAM8 image.now HAM8 is great for pictures, but if you have delicate colour lines HAM8 has some colour inertia,so a second method is provided for AGA: 216 colour which gives you sharp colour changes, useful for egblue text on white background (which I have endured!),216 colour viewer is good for docs with simple colour usage,cheap and cheerful colour.Now for AGA WB, 8 bit gray is not an option, so instead there are 2 WB window viewers: 1 bit b/w == very fast and a colour viewer. AGA WB gives you convenience but lacks the subtlety of colour of custom screen HAM8.Thus for AGA there are 4 Custom screen viewers and 2 WB viewers.Now with AGA the custom screen 1 bit b/w viewer only uses *1* bitplane, this makes extremely fast viewer graphics:compare, 1 bit b/w 1 bitplane lores == 8 * 2 * 2 * 2 == 64 times as fast as HAM8 super hi res laced == 3 * 64 == 192 times as fast as 24 bit rgb super hi res laced,(all other things being equal)would you say no to a 192 graphics speedup?Anyway with page renders all the numbers multiply up till you hit the boundary of your machine eg the 400 meg a4 page above.The above is why there are 12 viewers.If I just gave you 1 method for Cyber namely the most convenient + maximum quality one which is truecolour WB viewer,there would be a time + memory penalty for this,why use truecolour if its just the text you want to read:1 bit b/w will get you through the doc much faster.:same thing for printing, if you print via Turboprint 1 bit b/w printing is much faster than truecolour.:if you have 500 pages to print you may wish to speed up the whole process, and only reprint in truecolour really interesting pages.Sorry about the length of reply but things quickly get very complicated with the printing processwhoosh777PS: as this thread has been selected for the moderated forum ignore what I said in the earlier posting! :I think the rearranging of the thread start has been very thoughtfully done by the moderators,(there was a malfunction when I made the original announce,something I did annoyed the framework!)
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 7 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Kulwant Bhogal on 21-Jul-2003 07:15 GMT
Whilst I commend the effort that has gone into bringing GS8 to the Amiga, I would like to know three things:

1. I already have GS5.10 installed that came with Turboprint which I use to print on my Epson Stylus Photo 870. What would I gain from installing GS8? What would I lose?

2. Would a PPC port of GS8 be much quicker? APDF has a PPC module and is still quite slow.

3. Is GS8 able to handle PDF files that APDF chokes on?

Kulwant
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 8 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Steve Hargreaves on 21-Jul-2003 12:47 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Kulwant Bhogal):
I'm sure whoosh will forgive me for replying to this, but it's such a simple reply, I thought I'd throw it in:-

What do you get that GS5.10 doesn't offer? Improved printing via TP's PS: device, in real truecolour. The ability to print black and white documents via TP using the extremely fast tp1 device in GS8. The ability to view PS documents in true colour (on a gfx card).

What do you lose? - nothing

and as far as I know, GS8 shouldn't choke on any PDF documents, unlike apdf.
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 9 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by AnonX on 21-Jul-2003 12:52 GMT
Thanks for the detailed reply :-)
but why not have one viewer and just set these options in the prefs?
or is it to do with them being a sort of virtual printer driver.
or the complex why each setup is handled.
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 11 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by whoosh777 on 21-Jul-2003 14:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (AnonX):
The above reply malfunctioned!I spent so long on it, that in the meantime Steve Hargreaves produced a much better answer,so believing in providence I abandon my reply!AnonX said:>Thanks for the detailed reply :-)>but why not have one viewer and just set these options in the prefs?>or is it to do with them being a sort of virtual printer driver.>or the complex why each setup is handled.well it is actually something like what you suggest:effectively there are 3 devices: whoosh1, whooshg and whoosh24,options are then selected via env-variables to generate the 12 viewers. ie the env-variables select different internal execution paths,so eg for the HAM8 custom screen viewer you use whoosh24 with the following env settings:set print 0set window 1set whooshsuper 0set whoosh216 0For the Cyber WB truecolour viewer you also use whoosh24 and env settings:set print 0set window 1set whooshsuper 1The code determines whether the setup has a graphics card or AGA so no env-variable required for this,for custom screen viewers, the user selects any screen from a requester. You can also specify a screen via an env variable,in which case no screen requester would appearMichael Merkel says he may write a GUI for setting these viewer env variables,My focus has always been on functionality rather than cosmetics, ie its useful rather than pretty, pretty useful??whoosh777
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 12 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by whoosh777 on 21-Jul-2003 19:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Anonymous):
I have made the cumulative country webstatsfor the Ghostscript 8.00 release websitepublicly available:visithttp://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/countrystats.htmland judge for yourself, these are cumulative stats,before the release announce the cumulative stats had saturated at300 - 400,only one email today though,and not too much forum discussion,I also know exactly how many referrals came from ann.lu,I wont tell you the no. but the top referrals website iswww.amiga-news.de,the action is not where you think,I think translators are required for the docs though formany languages,whoosh777
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 13 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Kulwant Bhogal on 22-Jul-2003 12:08 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Steve Hargreaves):
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. In what way (specifically) is GS8 better? Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking anything, 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.

> 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? If not that would not be a strong selling point - because I get b&w printouts from TP anyway, I couldn't really care less if xxxdevice was used or yyydevice was used to get there. 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.

> 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, 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)? How much time, disk space and memory does such a task take? I frequently download big (>2Mb) PDF files (technical product manuals) and it would be nice to have something which can handle these elegantly.

Thanks for your reply.

Kulwant
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
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 15 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by Kulwant Bhogal on 22-Jul-2003 19:42 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (whoosh777):
Hi Whoosh,

Thanks very much for your detailed reply. Sounds good. I'm off to download and install (well probably install tomorrow - as it's getting late now).

Thanks again.

Kind regards,

Kulwant
A.F.P.L Ghostscript 8 released today! : Comment 16 of 15ANN.lu
Posted by whoosh777 on 23-Jul-2003 15:04 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Kulwant Bhogal):
Kulwant said:============================Hi Whoosh,<p>Thanks very much for your detailed reply. Sounds good. I'm off to download and install (well probably install tomorrow - as it's getting late now).</p><p>Thanks again.</p><p>Kind regards,</p><p>Kulwant============================Great!</p><p>I'm sure you wont regret it, as its a stand-alone install ie doesnt affect other GS installs all you can lose is some disk space (less than 20meg which is nothing by todays standards).</p><p>Getting started will take some time, probably at least an afternoon,but once you know your way around its straightforward.</p><p>Feel free to contact me or eg Michael Merkel who has a very similar setup to yours, ie Epson stylus photo 890, cyberstorm 060/ppc, voodoo3000 + cybergraphx4, he also was previously using GS5.10. Michael is one of the main Viewer testers so I know all 6 Cybergraphics viewers fully function on his setup.</p><p>Peer Richter the other main GS8 Turboprint tester has Canon_S820 inkjet which produces stunning printouts via GS8 Turboprint.</p><p>So if anyone was wondering whether to buy Turboprint, or to try Turboprint via GS8 or about a good printer to buy they could contact Peer.</p><p>I am planning to get a G3 PegasosII when they come out,so at that point I will look into doing a version for that.I think though that the 68020 version should function perfectly adequately, no feedback yet on this. As JIT emulation is 75% of G3 native its almost not worth doing a special version.</p><p>If and when A1-OS4 becomes available I will look into that also. Again the 68020 version will probably be so fast that the time issue becomes irrelevant.</p><p>I am certain but have no proof though that the time bottleneckon a G3 will generally be the printer speed ie not a computer issue! </p><p>whoosh777
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