Article 37310 of comp.lang.postscript: From: ghost@aladdin.com ("L. Peter Deutsch") Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Announcing the release of Aladdin Ghostscript 5.0 Date: 18 Jun 1997 14:37:28 -0700 Aladdin Ghostscript 5.0 is now available from ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/ The main source code: -r--r--r-- 1 ghost 2524130 Jun 6 21:03 ghostscript-5.0.tar.gz A few GNU-licensed drivers: -r--r--r-- 1 ghost 11832 Jun 6 21:03 ghostscript-5.0gnu.tar.gz The executable and runtime files for MS-DOS and MS Windows: -r--r--r-- 1 ghost 2072025 Jun 6 21:20 ghostscript-5.0pc.tar.gz In addition, the following links have been made available: lrwxr-xr-x 1 ghost 21 Jun 6 17:54 ghostscript-5.0jpeg.tar.gz -> ../jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz lrwxr-xr-x 1 ghost 22 Jun 6 17:54 ghostscript-5.0libpng.tar.gz -> ../libpng-0.89c.tar.gz lrwxr-xr-x 1 ghost 20 Jun 6 17:54 ghostscript-5.0zlib.tar.gz -> ../zlib-1.0.4.tar.gz lrwxr-xr-x 1 ghost 35 Jun 6 17:55 ghostscript-fonts-other-5.0.tar.gz -> ghostscript-fonts-other-4.40.tar.gz lrwxr-xr-x 1 ghost 32 Jun 6 17:55 ghostscript-fonts-std-5.0.tar.gz -> ghostscript-fonts-std-4.0.tar.gz Our Web page has not yet been updated to reflect the availability of this release, so for the moment you will need to retrieve it directly by FTP. ZIP files for PC platforms are not available yet. However, since all the files needed to run on PCs are in the pc.tar.gz archive, you might consider getting MS-DOS versions of gzip and tar, both of which are available free. Highlights of this release include: - Support for PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3.0), including CFF (compressed embedded) fonts. - Support for CIDFonts and CMap-keyed fonts. - (Optional) ability to read MS-DOS EPSF files. - Output in JPEG format. - Output in PCL XL ("PCL 6") format. - Distillation of PDF or PostScript to PostScript or EPS (without preview). - Much improved distillation of PostScript to PDF. - New, more flexible architecture for color inkjets (uniprint driver). - Support for in-RAM band lists compressed with zlib, for embedded applications. - Support for compilation with Microsoft Visual C++ on 32-bit MS Windows platforms. - Support for GNU make on OpenVMS. - First-level validation (no crashes or unexpected errors) with the Genoa PostScript Level 2 CET by an independent third party. We have deliberately dropped the following: - Support for 16-bit MS-DOS and MS Windows environments. - The pstoppm.ps file, which has been obsoleted by the p*m drivers for 2 releases. We are considering dropping support for the Borland compilers in the next release, and only supporting Watcom and Microsoft (and possibly the Cygnus cygwin32 port of gcc, if Cygnus will license the run-time library under the LGPL rather than the GPL: if you agree that you shouldn't have to put your own programs under the GNU License just because you compiled them with Cygnus' compiler, please send e-mail to info@cygnus.com to encourage Cygnus to make this change). If you have opinions about what compilers we should support, please let us know at ghost@aladdin.com. We are also planning to drop support for building on OpenVMS using DCL scripts: starting with the next release, you will need to acquire, make a couple of minor patches in, and build GNU make in order to build Ghostscript on OpenVMS. (You won't be required to use gcc to build Ghostscript: you will still have the choice of DEC C, VAX C, or gcc.) If you have opinions about this, please let us know. We considered supporting MMK or MMS, and decided in favor of GNU make primarily because it would mean the least divergence between the VMS makefiles and the ones already used for all other platforms. Please report problems in the 5.0 release by e-mail to ghost@aladdin.com using the bug-form.txt reporting form that you will find in the Ghostscript fileset. We don't promise to investigate every problem, but if you provide us with a fully filled-out reporting form, the chances are much better that we will look into it. As usual, we expect that despite thorough testing over the last 2 1/2 months, some significant problems have slipped through. If turns out to be the case, we will issue a 5.0x follow-on release between June 15 and June 20. In either case, by June 20 either 5.0 or 5.0x will become a supported release for our commercial OEM licensees. We expect to release GNU Ghostscript 3.53 (a re-release of Aladdin Ghostscript 3.53, originally distributed in January 1996) in the next few weeks. After that, while we have plans to start implementing PostScript 3 as soon as Adobe releases the specs, and a commitment to implement the rest of the Display PostScript operators (plus the NeXT alpha-channel extensions) by this Fall, we don't have concrete plans for the next release. Aladdin is committed to continuing the development of Ghostscript as a fully competitive commercial-quality product as well as an unsupported, freely redistributable package for end users. If you are, or you know someone who might be, a hardware, software, or system OEM interested in licensing Ghostscript for incorporation in a commercial product (either embedded or host-based), please contact our exclusive licensing partner, Artifex Software Inc., info@arsoft.com. Thanks - L. Peter Deutsch | Aladdin Enterprises :::: ghost@aladdin.com 203 Santa Margarita Ave. | tel. +1-415-322-0103 (AM only); fax +1-415-322-1734 Menlo Park, CA 94025 | http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html "Few things are impossible to diligence and skill." --- Article 37362 of comp.lang.postscript: Path: news.mcgill.ca!news.risq.qc.ca!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsflash.concordia.ca!news.dal.ca!usenet.logical.net!dciteleport.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.mathworks.com!chi-news.cic.net!data.ramona.vix.com!vixie!aladdin.com!ghost From: ghost@aladdin.com ("L. Peter Deutsch") Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Announcing the release of Aladdin Ghostscript 5.01 Date: 20 Jun 1997 23:57:51 -0700 Organization: Vixie Enterprises Lines: 98 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: gw.home.vix.com X-Received: from genie.aladdin.com (genie.aladdin.com [192.5.5.89]) by gw.home.vix.com (8.8.6/) via SMTP id XAA02730 for ; Fri, 20 Jun 1997 23:57:47 -0700 (PDT) env-from (ghost@aladdin.com) X-Received: from lamp.aladdin.com by genie.aladdin.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #2) id m0wfGfD-000RaRC; Fri, 20 Jun 97 20:16 PDT X-Received: by lamp.aladdin.com (Smail3.1.29.1 #2) id m0wfHG2-000R26C; Fri, 20 Jun 97 20:54 PDT X-To: gs-5.0-announce@aladdin.com X-Reply-to: ghost@aladdin.com Aladdin Ghostscript 5.01 is now available from ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/ ghostscript-5.01.tar.gz (source code) ghostscript-5.01pc.tar.gz (PC executables and run-time files) ghostscript-5.01libpng.tar.gz@ (libpng 0.96) [plus the following that are identical to their 5.0 counterparts:] ghostscript-5.01gnu.tar.gz (a few GNU-licensed drivers) ghostscript-5.01zlib.tar.gz@ (zlib 1.0.4) [plus the following that are identical to their 4.03 and 5.0 counterparts:] ghostscript-5.01jpeg.tar.gz@ (IJG JPEG 6a) ghostscript-fonts-std-5.01.tar.gz@ ghostscript-fonts-other-5.01.tar.gz@ ZIP files for PC platforms are not available yet. However, since all the files needed to run on PCs are in the pc.tar.gz archive, you might consider getting MS-DOS versions of gzip and tar, both of which are available free. 5.01 is essentially a bug-fix release for 5.0. We repeat most of the 5.0 release announcement here. Highlights of this release, relative to 4.03, include: - Support for PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3.0), including CFF (compressed embedded) fonts. - Support for CIDFonts and CMap-keyed fonts. - (Optional) ability to read MS-DOS EPSF files. - Output in JPEG format. - Output in PCL XL ("PCL 6") format. - Distillation of PDF or PostScript to PostScript or EPS (without preview). - Much improved distillation of PostScript to PDF. - New, more flexible architecture for color inkjets (uniprint driver). - Support for in-RAM band lists compressed with zlib, for embedded applications. - Support for compilation with Microsoft Visual C++ on 32-bit MS Windows platforms. - Support for GNU make on OpenVMS. - First-level validation (no crashes or unexpected errors) with the Genoa PostScript Level 2 CET by an independent third party. We have deliberately dropped the following: - Support for 16-bit MS-DOS and MS Windows environments. - The pstoppm.ps file, which has been obsoleted by the p*m drivers for 2 releases. For the next release, we are considering supporting the Cygnus cygwin32 port of gcc, if Cygnus will license the run-time library under the LGPL rather than the GPL: if you agree that you shouldn't have to put your own programs under the GNU License just because you compiled them with Cygnus' compiler, please send e-mail to gordoni@cygnus.com to encourage Cygnus to make this change. If you have opinions about what compilers we should support, please let us know at ghost@aladdin.com. We are also planning to drop support for building on OpenVMS using DCL scripts: starting with the next release, you will need to acquire, make a couple of minor patches in, and build GNU make in order to build Ghostscript on OpenVMS. (You won't be required to use gcc to build Ghostscript: you will still have the choice of DEC C, VAX C, or gcc.) If you have opinions about this, please let us know. We considered supporting MMK or MMS, and decided in favor of GNU make primarily because it would mean the least divergence between the VMS makefiles and the ones already used for all other platforms. Please report problems in the 5.01 release by e-mail to ghost@aladdin.com using the bug-form.txt reporting form that you will find in the Ghostscript fileset. We don't promise to investigate every problem, but if you provide us with a fully filled-out reporting form, the chances are much better that we will look into it. As we expected, some problems showed up in the 5.0 release; we have fixed as many of them as possible in 5.01. Unfortunately, due to a problem at Aladdin's ISP, the June 6 announcement of 5.0 didn't actually reach many people until June 12, so we didn't get as much user feedback before June 20 as we had hoped for. Therefore, depending on what we hear in the next 3 weeks, we may issue a 5.02 release around July 20. Whether or not we do this, 5.01 (and, if issued, 5.02) will be supported releases for our commercial OEM licensees. We expect to release GNU Ghostscript 3.53 (a re-release of Aladdin Ghostscript 3.53, originally distributed in January 1996) before the end of July. Aladdin is committed to continuing the development of Ghostscript as a fully competitive commercial-quality product as well as an unsupported, freely redistributable package for end users. If you are, or you know someone who might be, a hardware, software, or system OEM interested in licensing Ghostscript for incorporation in a commercial product (either embedded or host-based), please contact our exclusive licensing partner, Artifex Software Inc., info@arsoft.com. Thanks - L. Peter Deutsch | Aladdin Enterprises :::: ghost@aladdin.com 203 Santa Margarita Ave. | tel. +1-415-322-0103 (AM only); fax +1-415-322-1734 Menlo Park, CA 94025 | http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html "Few things are impossible to diligence and skill." ---