Xref: utzoo gnu.ghostscript.bug:257 comp.lang.postscript:6128 uw.general:1756
Newsgroups: gnu.ghostscript.bug,comp.lang.postscript,uw.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!accwai
From: accwai@maytag.waterloo.edu (Andy Wai)
Subject: Re: GhostScript 2.0
Message-ID: <1990Sep17.214820.10776@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Keywords: ftp prep.ai.mit.edu
Organization: Math Faculty Computing Facility, University of Waterloo
References: <1990Sep14.124159.24348@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <1990Sep14.142439.28483@watmath.waterloo.edu> <1990Sep17.042530.8939@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Distribution: uw
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 90 21:48:20 GMT
Lines: 23

In article <1990Sep17.042530.8939@watserv1.waterloo.edu> lindsay@watnow.waterloo.edu (Lindsay Patten) writes:
>Speaking of GhostScript, what is its state?  Is it a useable
>postscript previewer?

It's currently installed on watmath and watdragon on trial basis.
I don't know where else Ken has moved it to but I tried it on maytag
and it blows up with floating point error.

Is it any good?  Well, it's much better than xps both in terms of
output quality and speed.  It correctly goes through 90% of my
collection of Postscript pictures and shows only minor problems on
the rest.

Is it a usable previewer?  Depends on what you want to preview.
If you want to look at multipage documents, you're out of luck.
1) Although it has all the basic fonts, some of the more obscured
families are missing.  2) It's rendition of text in small sizes is
absolutely gross.  3) For some reason, text output is very slow
in relation to the rest of the system.  4) Postscript itself is
not very suitable for "previewing" anyway.  Unless you buffer all
output, there is no way you can go back and forth among pages.

Andy