[Info-vax] Ghostscript update for VMS

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <iusrlv$27t6$1 at adenine.netfront.net>, Mark Berryman
<mark at theberrymans.com> writes: 

> Is anyone still using ghostscript?  

Yes.  And GV.  IIRC, GV uses GS or something like that.

> I have a build of 9.02 I'd like to 
> have a couple of folks try out.  

Yes, please.  Contact me via email.

> I am also wondering if anyone still 
> wants this done as a PCSI kit or if a simple ZIP of the necessary files 
> (which are fewer in number than they were before) is sufficient.

I tend to prefer to distinguish between DEC stuff (OS, layered products 
and similar stuff like Rdb) (PCSI or VMSINSTAL, goes to the system disk) 
and third-party products (ZIP, OSU web server, LaTeX etc) (ZIP archive, 
unpack it, read the README, build it---I put this on a non-system disk 
dedicated to such software).  The reason is that I like to have more 
transparency and control over stuff which is not closely tied to the OS; 
it also keeps the system disk small.

A couple of months ago, I used my very old version quite a bit:

   Aladdin Ghostscript 4.03 (1996-9-23)

   "X11_ROOT" = "DSA520:[GHOST.GHOSTVIEW343.]" (LNM$PROCESS_TABLE)

I hadn't used it in a long time and was surprised to find that it had 
problems finding fonts, whereas it definitely worked in the past (with 
the same program generating the PostScript---a Fortran program unchanged 
since the mid-1990s).  I resorted to bitmapping the output (on another 
machine) and could then view the files locally (the original files 
printed fine on a PostScript printer (from HP, as it happens)).

Considering the antiquity of my present version and the fact that it 
doesn't work anyway, it's probably better to start over from scratch.

(I must admit that I have never understood what actually goes on under
the hood involving font selection etc, which fonts I have to install
where, if and if so how font substitution happens if a font is missing
etc.) 

I like the packaging which SMS uses for ZIP, UNZIP, WGET etc.

I have 7.3-2 but hope to upgrade to 8.3 within the next couple of
months.  Generally, I like compiling and linking, rather than going with 
pre-built executables, but the latter are OK (especially if they work 
out of the box).

Compaq C V6.2-008 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2

Now that I no longer have patch access (even though I am willing to pay 
a reasonable fee for it), I am a bit hesitant about upgrading software 
and also don't want to maintain multiple versions of stuff to fall back 
on.  So, if your kit will build with what I have, so much the better, 
but I'm happy to test pre-built stuff providing that it works (which 
presumably means built on 7.3-2 or earlier).

Of all the things I need to upgrade, this is the most urgent (since I 
haven't upgraded it for longer than for most other packages and also 
since a lot has changed in the meantime).  I actually plan to be doing a 
lot of stuff with PostScript and PDF in the near future, generated from 
a variety of sources, and am willing to test things quite extensively, 
hoping any bugs will be fixed.  :-)