[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: jobs database (well, looking for job)



On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:

> ps2pdf on Linux seems to do a much better job then its windows cousin...

Are you sure?

The following is a bit off-topic, so feel free to skip this post...

ps2pdf is a simple script that uses ghostscript. It is availble for just
about any platform for which ghostscript is availble. (an equivalent
option is to use the "pdfwrite" 'printer' from GhostGum GhostView).

GhostScript is reaseased under a license called AFPL (Aladin Free Public
License) which generally allows everything except redistribution of
binaries. For that you have to pay Aladin.

Aladin also releases older versions of GohstScript under the Gnu GPL. 
Therefore you have Alading GhostScript (or AFPL GS) and GNU GhostScript,
and the latter lags behind in versions (and therefore in functionality. I
believe that 5.5->6.0 was an important improvment, but I'm not so sure).

Linux distros can't use the APFL GhostScript, because they have to modify
their binaries, and therefore include GNU GhostScript.

When you download GhostScript and install it on windows you typically
install the latest version of AFPL GhostScript. Therefore I'm quite
surprised that you say that the windows version performs better.

(One could just as easily download and build AFPL GhostScript on linux,
but typically one install the software from the distro).

Also note that quite recently a newer version of GhostScript was finally
released under the GPL: 6.51 . But I believe that the current version in
all the distros is 5.50 . The current version of AFPL GhostScript is 7.0

I also must note that I foound adobe distiller, which I have installed
here at work, perform much better on material produced by wondows
postscript driver.

Try converting various postscript files from
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~cs234262/Slides/
(not hard to notice which were made with dvips and which were made with
windows' postsript driver). Compare your results to the pdf files there
that were made with distiller.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir


=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il