Changes in the most recent release of Ghostscript

This document is news about the most recent Ghostscript release. For earlier versions, see the history documents:

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 6.53 (2002-02-13)

This is a maintanence release of the stable GPL branch of Ghostscript.

Major changes include:

A rather serious security problem has been fixed, where PostScript code could allow the execution of arbitrary commands.
There is also a new -DPARANOIDSAFER option, which locks down reading of arbitrary files.
Important improvements in asian language support contributed by the gs-cjk team.
This release integrates the IJS driver, which makes it much easier to add and upgrade printer drivers without needing to recompile Ghostscript.
This release integrates a client for the Gimp-Print (stp) library of high-quality inkjet drivers.
Also new in this release is a configure script (generated by GNU Autoconf) for automatically configuring the makefile on Unix platforms. Those who enjoy the fun of hand-editing the makefile are still welcome to do so.

There are also the usual minor big fixes.

Incompatible changes

No incompatible changes have been recorded for this version. Authors of drivers with potential security implications are encouraged to review the security changes, however.

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

GNU Ghostscript version 6.53, 13 February 2002