For other information, see the Ghostscript overview and "How to build Ghostscript from source code".
You must have three things to run Ghostscript:
gs_*.ps unless Ghostscript was compiled
using the "compiled initialization files" option. See the documentation of
PostScript files distributed with Ghostscript.
pdf_*.ps if Ghostscript was compiled
with the ability to interpret Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files,
that is, pdf.dev was included in
FEATURE_DEVS when Ghostscript was built.
Fontmap and Fontmap.GS (or the
appropriate Fontmap.xxx for your platform), unless
you plan always to invoke Ghostscript with the -dNOFONTMAP switch.
The usage documentation describes the search algorithms used to find initialization files and font files. The per-platform descriptions that follow tell you where to install these files.
Ghostscript uses the common configure, build and install method common to many modern software packages. In general the following with suffice to build ghostscript:
./configure
make
make installThis last command may need to be performed with super user privileges.
You can set the installation directory by adding --prefix=path to the configure invocation in the first step. The default prefix is /usr/local, which is to say the gs executable is installed as /usr/local/bin/gs.
A list of similar configuration options is available via ./configure --help
For more detailed information on building Ghostscript see
how to build Ghostscript on Unix in
the documentation on building Ghostscript, especially regarding information
on using the older hand edited makefile
approach. Whatever configuration method you use, execute "make
install" to install the executable and all the required and
ancillary files after the build is complete.
The makefile installs all the files except fonts under the directory
defined in the makefile as prefix. Fonts need to be
installed separately. The fonts should be installed in
{prefix}/share/ghostscript/fonts.
(That is, /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/ if you used the default
configuration above.)
If you have Adobe Acrobat installed, you can use the Acrobat fonts
in place of the ones distributed with with Ghostscript by adding the
Acrobat fonts directory to
GS_FONTPATH and removing these fonts from
Fontmap.GS:
Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-BoldOblique, Courier-Oblique, Helvetica, Helvetica-Bold, Helvetica-BoldOblique, Helvetica-Oblique, Symbol, Times-Bold, Times-BoldItalic, Times-Italic, Times-Roman, ZapfDingbats
Similarly, you can have ghostscript use other fonts on your system by adding entries to the fontmap or adding the directories to the GS_FONTMAP environment variable. See the usage documentation for more information. For example, many linux distributions place fonts under /usr/share/fonts.
For Linux, you may be able to install or upgrade Ghostscript from precompiled RPM files using:
rpm -U ghostscript-N.NN-1.i386.rpm
rpm -U ghostscript-fonts-N.NN-1.noarch.rpm
However, please note that we do not create RPMs for Ghostscript, and we take no responsibility for RPMs created by others.
We usually distribute Ghostscript releases for Windows as self-extracting archive files, since this is the most convenient form for users. These files can also be unpacked as if they were plain zip files.
The last version to run on 16-bit Windows 3.1 was Ghostscript 4.03.
The self-extracting archive is normally named
gs###w32.exe,
where ### is the release number (e.g., 650 for Ghostscript 6.50,
700 for Ghostscript 7.00).
The x64 self-extracting archive is normally named
gs###w64.exe
This is for 64-bit Windows operating systems based on the x64 instruction set.
Do not use this on 64-bit processors running 32-bit Windows.
To install a self-extracting Ghostscript archive on Windows, you need just this self-extracting archive file. Run this file to install Ghostscript.
Alternatively, if you have the zip file, unzip it to a temporary
directory then run the included setupgs.exe.
After the setup program has finished, remove the temporary files.
The setupgs.exe executable in the zip file (and also
in the self-extracting archive) supports a primitive form of
unattended installation: if it is invoked with exactly one argument,
that one argument is treated as the target installation directory for
unattended silent batch installation.
The NSIS-based installer (see also Release.htm
supports a few standard NSIS options: /NCRC disables the CRC check,
/S runs the installer or uninstaller silently, /D
sets the default installation directory (It must be the last parameter
used in the command line and must not contain any quotes, even if the path
contains spaces. Only absolute paths are supported.)
After installing Ghostscript, it is strongly recommended that you install the GSview previewer, which provides an easier to use graphical interface for Ghostscript. Information on GSview is available from:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/
The archive includes files in these subdirectories:
gs#.##\bin
gs#.##\examples
gs#.##\lib
gs#.##\doc
gs#.##\Resource
fonts
The actual executable files for the 32-bit Windows install, in the gs#.##\bin
subdirectory, are:
GSWIN32C.EXEGhostscript as a 32-bit Windows command line program. This is usually the preferred executable. GSWIN32.EXE32-bit Ghostscript using its own window for commands GSDLL32.DLL32-bit dynamic link library containing most of Ghostscript's functionality
For the 64-bit Windows install, also in the gs#.##\bin
subdirectory, they are:
GSWIN64C.EXEGhostscript as a 64-bit Windows command line program. This is usually the preferred executable. GSWIN64.EXE64-bit Ghostscript using its own window for commands GSDLL64.DLL64-bit dynamic link library containing most of Ghostscript's functionality
See "Using fonts from Adobe Type Manager" below for information about using Adobe Type Manager, Adobe Type Basics, or Adobe Acrobat fonts. If your system uses TrueType fonts, you can get them converted to a Ghostscript-compatible format at the time you select your "printer" by doing the following:
- Open control panel and double-click on the "Printers" icon.
- Select your PostScript printer.
- Choose Setup.
- Choose Options.
- Choose Advanced.
- At the top of the dialog box you will see TrueType Fonts Send to Printer As: Choose (drop-down menu) Adobe Type 1.
- Uncheck Use Printer Fonts for All TrueType Fonts and Use Substitution Table.
- OK.
- OK etc.
That's it! Your TrueType fonts will automatically be downloaded in your PostScript file for Ghostscript to use.
For printer devices, the default output is the default printer. This can be modified as follows.
-sOutputFile="%printer%printer name"- Output to the named printer. If your printer is named "HP DeskJet 500" then you would use -sOutputFile="%printer%HP DeskJet 500".
If Ghostscript fails to find an environment variable, it looks for a registry value of the same name under the key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GPL Ghostscript\#.##
or if that fails, under the key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GPL Ghostscript\#.##
where #.## is the Ghostscript version number.
Ghostscript will attempt to load the Ghostscript dynamic link
library GSDLL32.DLL in the following order:
GS_DLL is defined,
Ghostscript tries to load the Ghostscript dynamic link library (DLL)
with the name given.
The Ghostscript setup program will create registry values
for the environment variables GS_LIB
and GS_DLL.
If you have Adobe Type Manager
(ATM) fonts installed on your system, and you wish to use them with
Ghostscript, you may wish to replace the FONTMAP file with
FONTMAP.ATM, and to add to the environment variable
GS_LIB the name of the directory where the fonts are located
(see Use.htm for more information
about GS_LIB). Before you
do this, please read carefully the license that accompanies the ATM fonts;
we take no responsibility for any possible violations of such licenses.
Similarly, if you have Adobe Type Basics, you may wish to replace
FONTMAP with FONTMAP.ATB. Finally, if you
have neither ATM nor ATB but you have Adobe Acrobat installed, you can use
the Acrobat fonts in place of the ones provided with Ghostscript by adding
the Acrobat fonts directory to GS_FONTPATH and removing
these fonts from FONTMAP:
Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-BoldOblique, Courier-Oblique, Helvetica, Helvetica-Bold, Helvetica-BoldOblique, Helvetica-Oblique, Symbol, Times-Bold, Times-BoldItalic, Times-Italic, Times-Roman, ZapfDingbats
To uninstall Ghostscript, use the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and remove "Ghostscript #.##" and "Ghostscript Fonts". (The entries may be called "GPL Ghostscript" or "AFPL Ghostscript", rather than just "Ghostscript", depending on what version of Ghostscript was installed.)
You need the file GS.EXE to run Ghostscript on OpenVMS, and
installing Ghostscript on an OpenVMS system requires building it first:
please read how to build Ghostscript on VMS
in the documentation on building Ghostscript.
The following installation steps assume that the Ghostscript directory is
DISK1:[DIR.GHOSTSCRIPT]. Yours will almost certainly be in
a different location so adjust the following commands accordingly.
DISK1:[DIR.GHOSTSCRIPT.LIB].
$ set file/prot=w:re DISK1:[DIR]GHOSTSCRIPT.dir $ set file/prot=w:re DISK1:[DIR.GHOSTSCRIPT...]*.*
$ lib/help sys$help:HELPLIB.HLB DISK1:[DIR.GHOSTSCRIPT.DOC]GS-VMS.HLP
$ define gs_exe DISK1:[DIR.GHOSTSCRIPT.BIN] $ define gs_lib DISK1:[DIR.GHOSTSCRIPT.EXE] $ gs :== $gs_exe:gs.exe
If you have DECWindows/Motif installed, you may wish to replace the
FONTMAP.GS file with FONTMAP.VMS. Read the
comment at the beginning of the latter file for more information.
The last version to run on DOS was Aladdin Ghostscript 5.10, which used a 386 DOS extender.
If you are running MS Windows, then use the MS Windows Ghostscript
command line executable GSWIN32C.EXE.
The Ghostscript OS/2 implementation is designed for OS/2 2.1 or later. You need these files to run Ghostscript on OS/2:
GSOS2.EXEA text application that will run windowed or full screen GSDLL2.DLLA dynamic link library that must be in the same directory as GSOS2.EXEor on theLIBPATH.GSPMDRV.EXEAn "external driver" used by the displaydevice, which is normally the default device and which displays output in a Presentation Manager window;GSPMDRV.EXEmust be located in the same directory asGSOS2.EXEor on thePATH
GSOS2.EXE, GSDLL2.DLL and
GSPMDRV.EXE are compiled using EMX/GCC 0.9d. You must have
the EMX DLLs on your LIBPATH; they are available in a
package emxrt.zip from many places on the Internet.
The system menu of the Ghostscript Image window includes a "Copy" command to copy the currently displayed bitmap to the Clipboard.
OS/2 comes with some Adobe Type Manager fonts. If you wish to use these with
Ghostscript, you should replace the FONTMAP file with
FONTMAP.OS2, and add to the environment variable
GS_LIB (see Use.htm
for more information about
GS_LIB) the name of the directory where the fonts are
located, usually C:\PSFONTS. Before you do this, please
read carefully the license that accompanies the ATM fonts; we take no
responsibility for any possible violations of such licenses.
Since GSOS2.EXE is not a PM application, it cannot
determine the depth of the PM display. You must provide this information
using the -dBitsPerPixel option. Valid values are 1, 4, 8
(the default), and 24.
Use For
-dBitsPerPixel=1VGA monochrome -dBitsPerPixel=4VGA standard -dBitsPerPixel=8SVGA 256 colors
Standard VGA is very slow because it uses double buffering to avoid bugs and because of 1-plane to 4-plane conversion; it's better to use a 256-color display driver. Many display drivers have bugs which cause 1 bit-per-pixel bitmaps to be displayed incorrectly.
GSOS2.EXE and GSPMDRV.EXE will stay in
memory for the number of minutes specified in the environment variable
GS_LOAD.
For printer devices, output goes to the default queue. To print to a
specified queue, use -sOutputFile=\\spool\NullLPT1, where
NullLPT1 is the queue's physical name.
Copyright © 2000-2006 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of that license. Refer to licensing information at http://www.artifex.com/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 7 Mt. Lassen Drive - Suite A-134, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861, for further information.
Ghostscript version 9.07, 12 February 2013