How to install Ghostscript

Table of contents

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview and "How to build Ghostscript from source code".


Overview of how to install Ghostscript

You must have three things to run Ghostscript:

  1. The Ghostscript executable file; on some operating systems, more than one file is required. These are entirely platform-specific. See below for details.
  2. Initialization files that Ghostscript reads in when it starts up; these are the same on all platforms.
  3. Fonts, for rendering text. These are platform-independent, but if you already have fonts of the right kind on your platform, you may be able to use those. See below for details. Also see the documentation on fonts.

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.


Installing Ghostscript on DOS

You need the files GS386.EXE and DOS4GW.EXE to run Ghostscript. You should install all the files except the fonts in C:\GS, and the fonts in C:\GS\FONTS.

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 below for more information about GS_LIB). Before you do this, please read carefully the license that accompanies the ATM fonts; Aladdin Enterprises takes 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

Installing Ghostscript on MS Windows

You need these files to run Ghostscript on Win32s (partial 32-bit environment under MS Windows 3), Windows 95, or Windows NT:

GS16SPL.EXE     Print spooler for Win32s (Windows 3) only; must be in the same directory as GWSIN32.EXE
GSWIN32.EXE   32-bit Ghostscript using windows
GSWIN32C.EXE   32-bit Ghostscript using only the command line
GSDLL32.DLL   32-bit Dynamic link library containing most of Ghostscript's functionality

You should install all the files except the fonts in C:\GS, and the fonts in C:\GS\FONTS.

The GSview previewer contains an installation program to install and configure GSview and Ghostscript for Win32. Information on GSview is available from:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

See "Installing Ghostscript on DOS" above 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:

  1. Open control panel and double-click on the "Printers" icon.
  2. Select your Postscript printer.
  3. Choose Setup.
  4. Choose Options.
  5. Choose Advanced.
  6. At the top of the dialog box you will see TrueType Fonts Send to Printer As: Choose (drop-down menu) Adobe Type 1.
  7. Uncheck Use Printer Fonts for All TrueType Fonts and Use Substitution Table.
  8. OK.
  9. 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     Win95 or WinNT
Prompt for a printer port   Win32s (Windows 3)

This can be modified as follows.

-sOutputFile="LPT1:"
Output to the named port.
-sOutputFile="\\spool\printer name" (Windows 95 or Windows NT)
Output to the named printer.
-sOutputFile="\\spool" (Windows 95 or Windows NT)
Prompt for the name of a printer. Only local printers are supported.

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\Aladdin Ghostscript\#.##

or if that fails, under the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Aladdin Ghostscript\#.##

where #.## is the Ghostscript version number. This does not work under Win32s (that is, Windows 3, which doesn't support named registry values).

If the environment variable GS_DLL is defined, Ghostscript tries to load the Ghostscript dynamic link library (DLL) with the name given. If this fails, Ghostscript tries to load GSDLL32.DLL from the current directory, the search path or the same directory as the Ghostscript executable.


Installing Ghostscript on OS/2 2.x

The Ghostscript OS/2 implementation is designed for OS/2 2.1 or later. A few people have used it successfully under OS/2 2.0, but it has had very little testing. You need these files to run Ghostscript on OS/2:

GSOS2.EXE     A text application that will run windowed or full screen
GSDLL2.DLL   A dynamic link library that must be in the same directory as GSOS2.EXE or on the LIBPATH.
GSPMDRV.EXE   An "external driver" used by the "os2pm" device, which is normally the default device and which displays output in a Presentation Manager window; GSPMDRV.EXE must be located in the same directory as GSOS2.EXE or on the PATH

GSOS2.EXE, GSDLL2.DLL and GSPMDRV.EXE are compiled using EMX/GCC 0.9b. You must have the EMX DLLs on your LIBPATH; they are available in a package emxrt*.zip from many places on the Internet, so you can find the package by using a search engine or the ftp lookup service at

http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/

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 below 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; Aladdin Enterprises takes 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=1   VGA monochrome
-dBitsPerPixel=4   VGA standard
-dBitsPerPixel=8   SVGA 256 colors

A command file gspm.cmd containing the following line may be useful:

@c:\gs\gsos2.exe -Ic:/gs;c:/gs/fonts;c:/psfonts -sDEVICE=os2pm -dBitsPerPixel=8 -sPAPERSIZE=a4 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8

While drawing, the os2pm driver updates the display every 5 seconds. On slow computers this is undesirable, and a different interval can be specified in milliseconds with the -dUpdateInterval option, with a default of -dUpdateInterval=5000; to disable update, use -dUpdateInterval=0.

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.

If you run GS386 in the OS/2 2.0 or 2.1 DOS box, you must select the "ENABLED" setting for the DPMI_DOS_API option of the DOS box. GS386 will not run with the "AUTO" setting.

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.


Installing Ghostscript on Unix

You need the file gs to run Ghostscript on Unix, and installing Ghostscript on a Unix system requires building it first: please read how to build Ghostscript on Unix in the documentation on building Ghostscript, especially regarding how to decide which makefile to use and how you may need to edit it. After building, execute "make install" to install the executable and all the required and ancillary files.

The makefile installs all the files except fonts under the directory defined in the makefile as "prefix", /usr/local by default. The fonts should be installed in {prefix}/share/ghostscript/fonts. Consult the makefile for more details. If 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

The syntax of the install command varies unpredictably between Unix systems. If your system has an installbsd program, edit the definition of INSTALL in the makefile to change "install" to "installbsd" before you run "make install".

For Linux, you can 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

Installing Ghostscript on OpenVMS

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.

Install all the files, including the fonts, in the same directory as the executable and initialization files. By default, this is the directory in which you did the compilation. Consult the documentation on building Ghostscript for more details.

If you have DECWindows/Motif installed, you may wish to replace the FONTMAP file with FONTMAP.VMS. Read the comment at the beginning of the latter file for more information.


Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved.

This file is part of Aladdin Ghostscript. See the Aladdin Free Public License (the "License") for full details of the terms of using, copying, modifying, and redistributing Aladdin Ghostscript.

Ghostscript version 5.50, 16 September 1998