Path: utzoo!yunexus!telly!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!aladdin.com!ghost
From: ghost@aladdin.com (L. Peter Deutsch)
Newsgroups: gnu.ghostscript.bug
Subject: Ghostscript: compiling; drivers; fonts
Message-ID: <8907190549.0.UUL1.3#5127@aladdin.com>
Date: 19 Jul 89 12:49:30 GMT
Article-I.D.: aladdin.8907190549.0.UUL1.3#5127
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Distribution: gnu
Organization: GNUs Not Usenet
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In <8907170530.0.UUL1.3#5127@aladdin.com>, Robert Seals writes:

1. The distributed executable doesn't even work on an 80386.

Well, I've looked further into the question, and there is some
flakiness with transferring large files between aladdin.com and the
machine I use to move Ghostscript out on the Internet: apparently the
executable got truncated.  I have a slower but more reliable path
that I'll be using for the next round.  I apologize for the
inconvenience.

2. The compiling scheme for DOS, which requires editing batch files
to remove the references to d:, is awkward.

I agree.  I haven't been able to figure out how to use the awkward
and primitive facilities of the DOS shell to work around this yet.

3. There are many, many (harmless) error messages about undefined
structures.

This is an artifact of trying to do data abstraction in C.  It's the
least evil way I could find of doing it.  It isn't beautiful, but it
works.

4. I wish I could plug in my own device drivers.

Version 1.3 includes a detailed description of how to write your own
device driver.  (See the file drivers.doc.)  It doesn't,
unfortunately, include reasonable documentation about how to install
it: I've been working on a way to make this easier, but right now it
needs a fair amount of arcane knowledge.  Also, a device driver has
to include quite a bit more than "draw a dot", although with a little
work on my part it could easily be reduced to "write a series of dots
on a single scan line".

5. Fonts.

Sigh.  Stay tuned.

6. Offer of help in coding.

Thanks, but that isn't the bottleneck.  I can churn out highly
portable C code at a pretty good clip.  The bottleneck right now is
design time, not implementation.

		- P. D.

		ghost@aladdin.com
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		P. O. box 60264, Palo Alto, CA 94306