From: williams@snoopy (Timothy Williams)
Subject: Re: viewing postscript files under X windows
Organization: Night Vision Labs, Ft Belvoir, VA
Lines: 97
X-Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of NVL or ARL
Nntp-Posting-Host: snoopy

In article <1sk97rINNptb@polaris.isi.com> kin@isi.com (Kin Cho) writes:
>
>I wonder if anybody know of a X-window-based postscript file
>viewer that runs under SunOS (prefered), HPUX, or IBM AIX.
>Reason I'm looking for this utility is that I've downloaded these
>large postscript documents and I'd like to know how useful (and how
>long) they are before commiting them to the printer and potentially
>wasting 200 pages of paper and hogging the printer for 1/2 hour.
>

Get ghostscript and ghostview.  Ghostview is a postscript previewer
that uses ghostscript.

From the ghostview README:



    Ghostview -- An X11 user interface for ghostscript.

Ghostview is full function user interface for ghostscript 2.4.

Brief list of features:
  - Ghostview parses any known version of Adobe's Document Structuring
    Conventions.
  - Page size is automatically determined from the Document Structuring
    Comments.  The user is able to override the values from the comments.
  - Window size is set to the bounding box for Encapsulated PostScript figures.
  - Default page size is Letter and can be changed via Xresources or
    application defaults file to A4 (or any other valid size) for our
    European friends.
  - Scrollbars appear when necessary.
  - Page orientation is automatically determined from the Document Structuring
    Comments.  The user is able to override the values from the comments.
  - Ability to view at 4 orientations: Portrait, Landscape, Upside-down,
    and Seascape (for those who rotate landscape the other direction).
  - Ability to preview in any supported visual.  (Can preview in gray-scale 
    or color on a Color monitor.)
  - Ability to mark pages for printing, or saving.  (Good for people that
    printed a 100 page document and lost page 59 due to a printer jam.)
  - Can popup zoom windows at printer resolution
    (1 display dot = 1 printer dot).

    The Ghostview distribution includes a Ghostview Widget that people
    are encouraged to use in other programs.

    Ghostview-1.3 is available via anonymous ftp from:
        prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/ghostview-1.3.tar.Z
        appenzell.cs.wisc.edu:/pub/ghostview-1.3.tar.Z


From the ghostscript README:

*****************************************************
* This file describes version 2.4.1 of Ghostscript. *
*****************************************************

********
******** An overview of Ghostscript ********
********

Ghostscript is the name of a set of software that provides:

        - An interpreter for the Ghostscript language, which very
closely resembles the PostScript (TM) language; and

        - A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library) that
implement the graphics capabilities that appear as primitive
operations in the Ghostscript language.

The Ghostscript language interpreter and library are written entirely
in C, with some assembly-language accelerators for MS-DOS platforms.
Currently, Ghostscript is known to run on the following platform
families:

        - IBM PC and compatibles with EGA, VGA, SuperVGA, or compatible
          graphics under MS-DOS 3.1, 3.3, or 5.0;

        - A wide variety of Unix systems using X Windows version 11,
          release 3, 4, and 5, including Sun-3, Sun-4, Sun-386i,
          Sun SPARCStation 1; generic 80386 machines running 386/ix;
          H-P 9000/300 and 9000/800; DECStation 2100 and 3100; VAX
          running Ultrix; Sequent Symmetry; Convex C1 and C2;
          Tektronix 4300; SGI Iris Indigo;

        - Sun workstations (Sun-3, SPARC, Sun-386i) running SunView;

        - VAX, VMS with X11R3/4/5, gcc and DEC C compiler (DEC C compiler
          version 3.1 or later is required).


(Get ghostscript from the same ftp site you get ghostview.)

-- 
Tim Williams                                   COM: (703) 704-1685
Night Vision & Electronic Sensors Directorate  DSN: 654-1685
AMSEL-RD-NV-VISPD (Williams)                   FAX: (703) 704-1705
Ft. Belvoir, VA 22060-5677                  E-MAIL: williams@nvl.army.mil
