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OT: Ghostscript, won't install

Given that it's *GhostScript* that isn't "100% PostScript compatible," I'd have to say "no." It's just like some of the original IBM PC clones back in the early '80s -- it wasn't IBM's fault that some of them were only "mostly" compatible and wouldn't run every single application than a true-Blue PC would.

Not that I'm knocking GhostScript though -- it's a great program given that it's free.

These days it doesn't really make a lot of sense for most people. Heck, Adobe figured that out as well when they introduced the PDF standard in 1993. I'd suggest that the people sending you PostScript files in the first place are being rather anachronistic, but of course I understand that often standards and procedures "make sense at the time" (...that they're adopted...), and then companies end up keeping them around due to the NRE cost of changing to something better or just due to plain old apathy (it works for them internally, who cares what the rest of the world is doing?). See also: ORCAD.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner
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But it won't even properly print. All I get is a blank page just like when trying to convert :-(

No, I am going to try to get them away from PS. After all, we are the client this time :-)

Ok, but Orcad still has a ton of followers. Not sure why but probably because they didn't want to recreate the libraries because that is serious cost.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Reply to
Joerg

Makes sense. :-)

I look at it from the point of view of, "How many new people will begin using some particular technology, assuming they aren't already using it?" For ORCAD (i.e., people buying new licenses who don't already have some) and PostScript, I think the answer is "pretty close to zero."

I think you're right about library recreation costs.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Maybe we should nickname Joerg as "Bizarro" :-)

I only have PS files that are three years old or older, but I whipped out GSview and took a look...

All I see is the usual crappy look you get from Eunuchs-based Cadence products... really ugly device annotations that make reading them a pain, but it prints exactly as seen on-screen.

Perhaps you have not set up a printer from within GSview?

And it converts just fine to PDF.

I do note you need to specify the output device.

Perhaps you have not set up a conversion from within GSview?

Cockpit error :-) Cockpit error :-) Cockpit error :-)

It's actually easier to annotate PostScript files... IF you know PostScript. Fortunately my introduction to PS was way back when that's all there was, so about 6" of my bookshelf is devoted to PostScript techniques :-)

What schematic tool was used to create the files? Maybe there's a free viewer? Then you could "print" to the device of your choice? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

                   Spice is like a sports car... 
     Performance only as good as the person behind the wheel.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

I ported my book from Wordperfect 5.1+ for DOS to LaTeX in about 2008, because the publisher had dropped WP support. It was fairly painful at the time, though fortunately some fellow sufferer had written a translator that got me about 70% of the way there.

I don't mind writing markup, and LaTeX has two shining virtues compared to Word and its ilk: (1) you can debug corrupted files, and (2) I can just write, instead of screwing around with menus and buttons and other such filth.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

You seem to be the only one around here with problems with PS. That doesn't make PS the problem.

--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Joerg seems to have problems with just about every software there is.

Maybe he has trouble with RTFM :-)

I also think he needs to run a reputable clean-up tool on his system. He claims crashes on products I've never had issues with. I think he's drifted off into DLL-conflict land, due to going "cheap".

Maybe he also needs to read-up on "compatibility" set-ups. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

                   Spice is like a sports car... 
     Performance only as good as the person behind the wheel.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

I can give a sample file a try with Illustrator if you'd like.

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Why? He can't/won't RTFM ;-)

My ancient (2001) copy of GSview/Ghostscript works just fine on

2008-generated PS files. ...Jim Thompson 
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

                   Spice is like a sports car... 
     Performance only as good as the person behind the wheel.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

That was why I posted the link for Revo uninstaller. It removes everything when an install goes wrong. I removed a program the other day, that the program's uninstaller routine left over 420 registry entries. If you keep installing and removing things without clean up behind yopurrself, it isn't long before nothing works right.

--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I've been pretty fortunate in that regard, except for NAV :-(

Had to download their own uninstaller.

Does the Revo uninstaller work on old installs, or just those installs it's monitored? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

                   Spice is like a sports car... 
     Performance only as good as the person behind the wheel.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

It makes life easier for the PC, which at the time typically had less memory and processing power than the printer.

Reply to
Nobody

Nope, not the only one. Actually, at one client an engineer calls PS "piece of s..t". He became a lot more fed up with it than I did.

Again, it's only Acrobat that crashes all the time. Now how do you explain that all other programs including some with a whole lot more complexity never crash on this here computation machine?

Also, it's machine independent. On the other PCs Acrobat crashes all the time and nothing else does. Same at clients. To me it is rather clear what that means.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Use another domain or send PM.
Reply to
Joerg

Thanks, Spehro, but I just came off the teleconference and it seems we can leave PS and go over to something better.

Well, I have two PS files here (which I unfortunately cannot share) that neither convert to PDF correctly nor point from GSView. Sure, a sheet comes out of the printer but there ain't nuthin' on there. On the screen they present ok but the circuit parts are dark gray, not black.

Nah, gimmee PNG and everything is cool.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Reply to
Joerg

Why should I have to? In the print menu the HP and all other printers show up. All other programs then print correctly WYSIWYG to said printer. GSView does not.

Which, in conclusion, means ...

Nah, aircraft with a rudder cable not connected :-)

Thing is, PNG can be annotated by a 5-year old (seen it) and you don't need 6" worth of books because something is oversophisticated. It just works.

AFAIK Cadence. But a viewer isn't all I need, annotation is also important. With modern file formats that's a nobrainer, you just load it into a graphics program of your choice and do it.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Reply to
Joerg

Probably because it doesn't have the fonts which the document uses, and is substituting something "similar" but with different metrics.

That's probably the viewer. PostScript is designed for hardcopy, where you have very high resolution but no grey shades. That's often less than ideal at screen resolution, so viewers tend to use some form of anti-aliasing, with varying degrees of success.

With GSView, you can control anti-aliasing via:

Media -> Display Settings ... -> Text Alpha / Graphics Alpha

If set to "1", you get black and white with no grey shades.

If .doc does everything that you need, there's not much point using TeX. TeX's "home turf" is cases where nothing else does the job.

Reply to
Nobody

I started with PCs in 1986 and for some reason was able to do all that without Postscript. The first CAD was Futurenet Dash-2 and later Dash-4. Rendered perfectly. Then I started self-employed and bought Orcad-SDT. Same thing, except that this one had tons of additional output formats. The best was HPGL which could flawlessly be imported into Word documents, I could even resize and all that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Use another domain or send PM.
Reply to
Joerg

This is probably an extreme example, but back on the good old Commodore 64, if you wanted truly publication quality word processing output from the geoWrite or geoPublish, you pretty much had to use a PostScript printer -- most all of the other printer drivers used "screen fonts," with a resolution of ~72DPI... pretty blocky! Hence -- while there weren't many of them -- some people were cranking out very high-quality newsletters and even magazines using a dorky little 8-bit computer... hooked up to a high-falootin' LaserWriter or similar, speaking PostScript.

(You probably remember this from the early days of Windows -- even in the early '90s in Word for Windows it was made clear which fonts were "TrueType" and which were "screen fonts," and with the later if you scaled them to a size that wasn't natively stored as a bitmap, the interpolation algorithms would often make for rather crude-looking results.)

Heck, in the late '80s there, Macs were really about the only system where WYSIWYG was true 100% of the time.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

ked.

r

Joerg,

Corel has Paint Shop Pro X3 for $60, vs Purplus' $100:

formatting link

OTOH, Purplus has Corel Creative Collection 2, which includes CorelDraw11, for $24.

formatting link

Outputs directly to .PDF too (See "Competitive matrix, pg 2, under "Productivity"):

formatting link
d=3D1047022702165

If it puts out vectors the .PDF quality should be excellent. Dunno or remember how CD handles .PS files, FW(hatever)T(hat's)W.

I still sometimes use an ancient version of CorelDraw for everything from illustrations to schematics to mechanical drawings to pcb layouts. It's really good. I think I use version 5, with version still 9 in a box somewhere (if it ain't broke, I don't fix it). CorelDraw for $24 is quite a deal.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

However,

The paid, 'Pro' version is supposed to clean out old crap. the free version only does current uninstalls.

--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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