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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

Still looking for  a way to view Adobe 6.0.  I found linuxpackages.net 
with ghostscript 6.51 for SW781  (with X11 not svgalib, it says) and 7.05 
for SW81 and neither was accessible, one being a site under construction, 
in Polish.

I followed the link to the ghostscript site and found there the latest GS
8.14 source code and Windows version (which I installed, along with GSview
for that version, in about 28MB total, and they work except for some of
the keyboard navigation, much faster than xpdf).  So I downloaded the gs
source code and three associated libraries - zlib, libpng, and jpegsrc.  
I did ./configure and was told to unpack jpegsrc files 'to the top level
of the gs source tree' (WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?) and rename (from jpeg-6b) to
jpeg.  Ghostscript made its own directory under which are /bin /doc/ /man
and /src among others.  Am I supposed to unpack jpegsrc after copying the
.tar.gz file to /src?  

There is also a Makefile.in with lists of possible devices including X11,
deskjet, ljet, pbm, png.. but not vgalib or svgalib, that I am supposed to
modify.  I wonder if I can just write up a DEVICE svgalib and insert it on
one of the lines where DEVICE is not defined.  Debian has 7.05 or so
compiled for svgalib, somehow.  Other programs that I have compiled came 
with a Makefile, or sometimes several for various hardwares.  
And there is a gs.mak with more discussion of devices and defaults.

Source for gs 8.14 is about 7M.  Win32 compiled gs about 7M (expands to 
20M) which I hope includes fonts, and Adobe for Windows is 9M (says it 
needs 60MB).  Windows gs worked well apart from the time wasted to load 
Windows.  

All hints appreciated but I don't expect this to go any better than 
compiling kernel modules.  The problem with using an older linux is you 
need to be able to compile for it.  An experienced programmer that I asked 
for help with kernel modules said he was sorry I gave up because he might 
have learned something if I succeeded.  


On Tue, 29 Jun 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> Someone sent me 2 pages that they scanned and converted to pdf.
> Xpdf displayed them as blank.
> pdf2ps produced a 0 length file.
> pdftops (DOS) told me that this is pdf 1.5 and I need 1.4.
> 
> gs 5.10 gave me a page of error messages (DOS or linux, Alladin)
> 
> I downloaded the SW81 gs 7.05 and installed it and discovered that it does 
> not support vgalib display, just X.  (To determine the display devices 
> available type gs or gs --help).  I uninstalled it as I prefer not to 
> waste time loading X every time I want to view a pdf file.
> 
> Delilinux has gs 7.05 so I downloaded that.  It is about 5M (downloaded at
> 1.3 to 3.1 k/sec) because it includes the fonts.  I did explodepkg and
> then tried typing ./gs and was told it needs libgimpprint.so.1
> 
> MANIFEST.z lists a /libgimp/ directory but not libgimpprint.
> gimp is in the gtk directory.
> Would i need to install gtk and gimp in order to run this gs?
> I have not used either of these.
> 
> Can I find just that one library for SW71?  Is there any chance that the 
> author of delilinux accidentally compiled with options such that it will 
> not work with SW71 files?  (Unlikely, his other programs have been 
> perfect - Xvesa, zgv, w3m, links2 recent version.)
> 
> The delilinux gs requires a lot of libraries not needed by the SW71 
> version (libping libjpeg and various X libraries).  It does not require 
> libvga and libvgagl, which the SW71 version does require, so probably will 
> not work with libvga anyway.  Or am I wrong?
> 
> There was also a gs 7.05 at linuxnet or linux.net but I cannot find it
> again.  Can someone please remind me of the URL.  I recall being unable to
> figure out how to download anything there so did not bookmark it.
> 
> The delilinux gs came with ps2pdf14, which converts ps to pdf 1.4, but I 
> did not see anything that will convert pdf 1.5 to pdf 1.4 - does anyone 
> know of such a program?  Perhaps the pdf2ps that comes with 7.05 will work 
> on pdf 1.5.  It is twice the size of the old one.  But it needs gs to run 
> and gives me the same error message about libbimpprint.
> 
> I will see if the SW81 gs 7.05 has a pdf2ps that works on pdf 1.5 (but I 
> need to download it again first).  
> 
> The people who sent me the pdf 1.5 eventually managed to produced a pdf
> 1.4.  They are clever, and also know how to produce gifs (I trained them
> to send mono gifs instead of 16 million color jpegs of a BW page) with
> their scanner, but most of the people who scan pages and send them as pdf
> have no idea how their 'pdf machine' software works (one of them produced
> pdf at fax resolution, which looked terrible), so I need some way to deal
> with this.  I hope not to have to compile my own gs (or use gs with X,
> because I am all set up to view with bmv in svgalib, and don't want to
> chase down ghostview and learn that).
> 
> 
> Sindi
> 
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