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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 Porta-
ble Document Format (PDF) languages. 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 keyboard), 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 keyboard).
The interpreter recognizes many option switches, some of which are described below. Please see the usage documentation
for complete information. Switches may appear anywhere in the command line and apply to all files thereafter. Invoking
Ghostscript with the -h or -? switch produces 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 environment 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 (densities). To specify the resolution on such a printer, use the "-r"
switch:
gs -sDEVICE=<device> -r<xres>x<yres>
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 output --
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 filename 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 speci-
fication; 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 Windows 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=<paper_size>
for instance
-sPAPERSIZE=a4
or
-sPAPERSIZE=legal
Most ISO and US paper sizes are recognized. See the usage documentation for a full list, or the definitions in the ini-
tialization 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 informa-
tion.
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 syntac-
tic form of switches) and defines the name "ARGUMENTS" in "userdict" (not "systemdict") 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 definition. 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
-P Makes Ghostscript to look first in the current directory for library files. By default, Ghostscript no longer
looks in the current directory, unless, of course, the first explicitly supplied directory is "." in -I. See also
the INITIALIZATION FILES section below, and bundled Use.htm for detailed discussion on search paths and how
Ghostcript finds files. -q Quiet startup: suppress normal startup messages, and also do the equivalent of
-dQUIET.
-gnumber1xnumber2
Equivalent to -dDEVICEWIDTH=number1 and -dDEVICEHEIGHT=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 -dDEVICEYRESOLUTION=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 command line. Ghostscript reads from standard input until it reaches end-of-file, exe-
cuting 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 definitions 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 outlines when it loads a font.) This may allow loading more fonts into RAM,
at the expense of slower rendering.
-dNOCACHE
Disables character caching. Useful only for debugging.
-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 pro-
gram is driving Ghostscript.
-dNOPLATFONTS
Disables the use of fonts supplied by the underlying platform (for instance X Windows). This may be needed if the
platform fonts look undesirably different from the scalable fonts.
-dSAFER
Disables the "deletefile" and "renamefile" operators 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 compiled into the executable when it is built. On Unix these are
typically based in /usr/local, but this may be different 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 definitions
/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" operator,
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 con-
tain "/" 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 ver-
sion number.
Each of these (GS_LIB_DEFAULT, GS_LIB, and -I parameter) may be either a single directory or a list of directories sepa-
rated 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 computed from WidthOfScreen and WidthMMOfScreen).
yResolution
The number of y pixels per inch (default is computed 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 8.71.
AUTHOR
Artifex Software, Inc. 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.
8.71 10 February 2010 GS(1)
