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GS(1) 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) lan-
guages. gs reads "files" in sequence and executes them as
Ghostscript programs. After doing this, it reads further
input from the standard input stream (normally the key-
board), 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 key-
board).
The interpreter recognizes many option switches, some of
which are described below. Please see the usage documena-
tion for complete information. Switches may appear any-
where in the command line and apply to all files there-
after. Invoking Ghostscript with the -h or -? switch pro-
duces 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
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 environ-
ment 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 (densi-
ties). To specify the resolution on such a printer, use
the "-r" switch:
gs -sDEVICE= -rx
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 out-
put -- 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
-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=
for instance
-sPAPERSIZE=a4
or
-sPAPERSIZE=legal
Most ISO and US paper sizes are recognized. See the usage
documenatation 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 information.
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 "ARGUMENTS" in "userdict" (not "system-
dict") as an array of those strings, before running
the file. When Ghostscript finishes executing the
file, it exits back to the shell.
-Dname=token
-dname=token
Define a name in "systemdict" with the given defi-
nition. 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
-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 or a pipe and not interactively from the com-
mand 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 defini-
tions in "userdict" or other dictionaries.)
SPECIAL NAMES
-dDISKFONTS
Causes individual character outlines to be loaded
from the disk the first time they are encountered.
(Normally Ghostscript loads all the character out-
lines when it loads a font.) This may allow load-
ing more fonts into RAM, at the expense of slower
rendering.
-dNOCACHE
Disables character caching. Useful only for debug-
ging.
-dNOBIND
Disables the "bind" operator. Useful only for
debugging.
-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 underly-
ing platform (for instance X Windows). This may be
needed if the platform fonts look undesirably dif-
ferent from the scalable fonts.
-dSAFER
Disables the "deletefile" and "renamefile" opera-
tors 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
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
initial 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 differ-
ent 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 defini-
tions
/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" opera-
tor, 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
command 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 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 num-
ber.
Each of these (GS_LIB_DEFAULT, GS_LIB, and -I parameter)
may be either a single directory or a list of directories
separated 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 com-
puted from WidthOfScreen and WidthMMOfScreen).
yResolution
The number of y pixels per inch (default is com-
puted from HeightOfScreen and HeightMMOfScreen).
useBackingPixmap
Determines whether backing store is to be used for
saving display window (default = true).
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
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
8.54.
AUTHOR
Artifex Software, Inc. and artofcode LLC 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.
8.54 17 May 2006 GS(1)