History of Ghostscript versions 8.xx

Table of contents

This document is a record of changes in Ghostscript releases numbered 8.xx. For earlier versions, see the the history documents:

History of Ghostscript versions 7.n
History of Ghostscript versions 6.n
History of Ghostscript versions 5.n
History of Ghostscript versions 4.n
History of Ghostscript versions 3.n
History of Ghostscript versions 2.n
History of Ghostscript versions 1.n

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview.


Version 8.01 (2004-01-30)

This is the first release of the 8.0x series under the GPL. It is very similar to the AFPL Ghostscript 8.00 release; the primary motivation is to change the license of the released code per our policy of a one year delay.

The most significant new feature since 7.0x is support for DeviceN colorspaces, up to 8 colorants total at 8 bits per component. Also, pdfwrite has seen considerable improvement in font handling, and many other bug fixes.

Incompatible changes

No incompatible changes are expected in this release.

Changelog

2004-01-30 23:10 Ralph Giles

Convert a hardwired product name to 'GPL Ghostscript'.

2004-01-30 23:09 Ralph Giles

Replace the license header of some of the test scripts with the generic version.

2004-01-30 09:21 Ralph Giles

Missed a line in the license change.

2004-01-30 09:08 Russell Lang

Update Windows files to "GPL Ghostscript".

2004-01-30 08:42 Russell Lang

Update copyright date for Windows release to 2004.

2004-01-30 08:00 Ralph Giles

Use the correct year in the release date.

2004-01-30 07:30 Ralph Giles

Correct the link to History8.htm.

2004-01-30 06:57 Ralph Giles

Update News and release date.

2004-01-30 01:34 Ralph Giles

Update the regression test suite to the latest version from HEAD.

2004-01-30 00:19 Ralph Giles

Change notice in some files that had been missed during original update
to the unified notice.

2004-01-20 19:16 Ralph Giles

Replace a fixed-filename tempfile fopen with gp_open_scratch_file() for improved robustness in the
pnga device. Part of the fix for bug 687243.

DETAILS:

This is an experimental device to preserve pdf transparency into a png rasterization and is
distinct from the pngalpha device. I doesn't actually work for me and so may be suffering
from bit rot; however the change compiles and should be correct.

2004-01-20 01:50 Ralph Giles

Propagate mkstemp and FILENAME_MAX changes from HEAD.

2004-01-19 23:21 Ralph Giles

Remove some very old scripts which contain /tmp races, a security risk should someone actually try to use them. Part of the fix for bug 687243.

2004-01-06 20:50 Ralph Giles

Propagate some configure script updates from HEAD.

2003-12-12 18:04 Ralph Giles

Link to History8.htm in the list of history files. Patch from Alexei Podtelez.

2003-12-11 03:27 Ralph Giles

Propagate the name change to the interpreter and update the revision date.

2003-12-11 03:24 Ralph Giles

Relicense the 8.0x branch as GPL Ghostscript.

2003-11-21 22:01 Ray Johnston

Security fixes. Add detection of %pipe% device when in SAFER mode. Also
fix detection of 'renamefile' to prevent rename from a file that is not on
the PermitFileControl list. Similar to the changes made for 7.0x by
version 1.11.2.5.

2003-11-20 19:29 Ray Johnston

Bump version in preparation for 8.01 GPL release.

Version 8.00 (2002-11-21)

This is the 8.00 release of AFPL Ghostscript. The most significant new feature since 7.0x is support for DeviceN colorspaces, up to 8 colorants total at 8 bits per component. Also, pdfwrite has seen considerable improvement in font handling, and many other bug fixes.

The following SourceForge bug numbers were open at the time of this release: 405342, 407342, 414947, 414985, 446344, 458261, 458775, 458780, 459647, 465936, 484752, 484753, 487953, 493348, 505429, 510808, 526099, 526491, 530011, 535366, 535752, 535836, 538033, 539239, 546823, 554076, 558151, 558435, 563287, 569573, 570772, 573744, 578838, 578865, 584990, 592160, 592837, 592841, 592925, 592930, 595760, 596009, 600288, 601255, 601336, 601694, 603934, 605830, 607425, 607850, 610356, 610478, 610727, 611694, 611701, 611727, 611898, 612801, 614298, 615165, 616970, 616976, 617077, 617523, 621246, 623292, 624515, 625085, 626059, 626295, 626358, 626419, 626464, 627545, 628110, 629335, 633299, 634036, 634358, 634514, 636210, 640159, 641278, 641280, 641283, 641296, 641490.

Incompatible changes

No incompatible changes in this release.




Documentation


First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
(doc/API.htm [1.29], doc/Bug-form.htm [1.33], doc/Bug-info.htm [1.32],
doc/C-style.htm [1.39], doc/Commprod.htm [1.26], doc/Copying.htm [1.25],
doc/DLL.htm [1.27], doc/Deprecated.htm [1.6], doc/Develop.htm [1.101],
doc/Devices.htm [1.58], doc/Drivers.htm [1.37], doc/Fonts.htm [1.35],
doc/Helpers.htm [1.29], doc/History1.htm [1.25], doc/History2.htm [1.25],
doc/History3.htm [1.25], doc/History4.htm [1.25], doc/History5.htm [1.27],
doc/History6.htm [1.42], doc/History7.htm [1.29], doc/Htmstyle.htm [1.30],
doc/Install.htm [1.39], doc/Issues.htm [1.33], doc/Language.htm [1.58],
doc/Lib.htm [1.27], doc/Maintain.htm [1.36], doc/Make.htm [1.62],
doc/New-user.htm [1.44], doc/News.htm [1.121], doc/Projects.htm [1.49],
doc/Ps-style.htm [1.23], doc/Ps2epsi.htm [1.27], doc/Ps2pdf.htm [1.49],
doc/Psfiles.htm [1.40], doc/Readme.htm [1.47], doc/Release.htm [1.74],
doc/Source.htm [1.25], doc/Tester.htm [1.24], doc/Testing.htm [1.14],
doc/Unix-lpr.htm [1.25], doc/Use.htm [1.71], doc/Xfonts.htm [1.25],
doc/gs-vms.hlp [1.24], man/dvipdf.1 [1.22], man/font2c.1 [1.22],
man/gs.1 [1.23], man/gslp.1 [1.22], man/gsnd.1 [1.22], man/pdf2dsc.1 [1.21],
man/pdf2ps.1 [1.23], man/pdfopt.1 [1.21], man/pf2afm.1 [1.22],
man/pfbtopfa.1 [1.23], man/printafm.1 [1.22], man/ps2ascii.1 [1.21],
man/ps2epsi.1 [1.20], man/ps2pdf.1 [1.27], man/ps2pdfwr.1 [1.26],
man/ps2ps.1 [1.29], man/wftopfa.1 [1.22]: 2002/11/21 07:12:16 raph)

Procedures


First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
(version.mak [1.58]: 2002/11/21 07:12:17 raph)

Utilities


Fixes problems:
	- Don't overwrite source file when ps2pdf.bat is used with 1
argument and the argument has no ".ps" extension. (Fixed by Moritz Barsnick)
Bug #631974 (lib/ps2pdfxx.bat [1.13]: 2002/11/20 03:01:23 alexcher)

Drivers


Documents the old macos output device as deprecated. This is superceeded by
the gdevdsp. (gdevmac.c [1.7]: 2002/11/20 18:24:44 giles)

PDF writer


Fixes problems:
	- Fix (pdfwrite) : pdf_put_colored_pattern wrongly accessed pattern
mask. SourceForge bugs "[ 623989 ] (pdfwrite) wrong colors with 269-01.ps",
"[ 602995 ] (pdfwrite) 269-01.ps limitcheck". (gdevpdfv.c [1.20]: 2002/11/18
22:23:40 igor)
	- Fix (pdfwrite) : Providing additional documentation about embedded
fonts. (gdevpdtb.c [1.12]: 2002/11/20 10:21:15 igor)
	- Fix (pdfwrite) : Encoding Differences were not written for
embedded Type 1,2 fonts that have a very instandard Encoding. Discovered
with SF bug "[ 641296 ] acrobat generates bad ps from gs pdf".
(gdevpdtt.c [1.24]: 2002/11/21 00:05:06 igor)
	- Fix (pdfwrite) : The previous patch about Encoding Differences was
inaccurate about True Types and CID fonts. Improving it with a better
condition. (gdevpdtt.c [1.25]: 2002/11/21 03:44:11 igor)

PDF Interpreter


Fixes problems:
	- Pattern stream was copied to the string failing with rangecheck
for long streams. The patch uses strings when possible and switches to
reusable streams for longer streams. Bug #634080, customer #561
(lib/pdf_draw.ps [1.63]: 2002/11/21 01:29:07 alexcher)

Interpreter


Fixes problems:
	- Correction for 637954 dina3_watermark.pdf fails on GS 7.33. This
forces the color space to /DeviceGray whenever the initgraphics operator is
called. Previously if color space substitution was active and the last
colorspace was /DeviceGray then its substituted colorspace would remain
active. (lib/gs_cspace.ps [1.5]: 2002/11/18 23:42:18 dan)
	- Packed array is accepted now as an encoded user path in insideness
testing operators. Bug #640855 (zupath.c [1.7]: 2002/11/20 18:17:28
alexcher)
	- Fix : (1) gc_status.requested was not initialized for stable
memories, but used by alloc_acquire_chunk. (2) setting
gc_status.vm_threshold and gc_status.enabled for stable memories
synchronously with non-stable ones. This allows to control stable memories
with setvmthreshold and vmreclaim. With default settings pdfwrite now works
faster. SourceForge bug "[ 621243 ] (pdfwrite) slow mahle.pdf"
(zvmem2.c [1.7]: 2002/11/20 18:56:56 igor)
	- Bring /SubstituteFont procedure prototype up to the standard:
<name> SubstituteFont <name> . Do traditional GS font
substitution after the standard font substitution. Use no-op standard font
substitution for backward compatibility. Bug #637424 Customer #71
(lib/gs_fonts.ps [1.24]: 2002/11/21 04:43:58 alexcher)

When processing multiple EPS files, call showpage if necessary for
subsequent files. (lib/gs_epsf.ps [1.10]: 2002/11/19 20:14:01 ghostgum)

Corrects a small typo in the api documentation. (gdevdsp.h [1.7]: 2002/11/20
17:46:26 giles)

First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
(lib/gs_init.ps [1.74]: 2002/11/21 07:12:17 raph)

Library


Fixes problems:
	- Fix : lsb must not apply to True Type subglyphs. The offset to be
taken from composite only. SourceForge bugs "[ 623122 ] component shift in
TrueType composites", "[ 536863 ] Type11 layout bugs". (gstype42.c [1.25]:
2002/11/20 09:55:26 igor)
	- Fix : (1) gc_status.requested was not initialized for stable
memories, but used by alloc_acquire_chunk. (2) setting
gc_status.vm_threshold and gc_status.enabled for stable memories
synchronously with non-stable ones. This allows to control stable memories
with setvmthreshold and vmreclaim. With default settings pdfwrite now works
faster. SourceForge bug "[ 621243 ] (pdfwrite) slow mahle.pdf"
(gsalloc.c [1.18]: 2002/11/20 18:56:43 igor)
	- Fix : (1) gc_status.requested was not initialized for stable
memories, but used by alloc_acquire_chunk. (2) setting
gc_status.vm_threshold and gc_status.enabled for stable memories
synchronously with non-stable ones. This allows to control stable memories
with setvmthreshold and vmreclaim. With default settings pdfwrite now works
faster. SourceForge bug "[ 621243 ] (pdfwrite) slow mahle.pdf"
(gsalloc.h [1.6]: 2002/11/20 18:57:10 igor)

First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
(gscdef.c [1.32]: 2002/11/21 07:12:17 raph)


Copyright © 2002 artofcode LLC. All rights reserved.

This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of the license contained in the file LICENSE in this distribution. For more information about licensing, please refer to http://www.ghostscript.com/licensing/. For information on commercial licensing, go to http://www.artifex.com/licensing/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 101 Lucas Valley Road #110, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861.

Ghostscript version 8.01, 30 January 2004