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Ghostscript is a programming language similar to Adobe Systems'
PostScript and PDF languages, which are in turn similar to Forth.
Gs reads files in sequence and executes them as Ghostscript programs.
After doing this, it reads further input from the standard input.
If the file – is named, however, it represents the
standard input, which is read in order and not after the files
on the command line. Each line is interpreted separately. The
`quit' command, or end–of–file, exits the interpreter.
The interpreter recognizes several switches described below, which
may appear anywhere in the command line and apply to all files
thereafter.
The –h or –? options give help and list the available devices; the
default is plan9, which produces compressed image files suitable
for viewing with page(1) (but note that page(1) will invoke gs
automatically; see its manual).
Ghostscript may be built with multiple output devices. Ghostscript
normally opens the first one and directs output to it. To use
device xyz as the initial output device, include the switch
–
in the command line. This switch must precede the first PostScript
file and only its first invocation has any effect. Output devices
can also be selected by the word selectdevice in the input language,
or by setting the environment variable GS_DEVICE. The order of
precedence for these alternatives, highest to
lowest, is:
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selectdevice
(command line)
GS_DEVICE
plan9
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Normally, output goes directly to a scratch file. To send the
output to a series of files foo1.xyz, foo2.xyz, etc., use the
switch
–
The %d may be any printf (see fprintf(2)) format specification.
Each file will receive one page of output. If the file name begins
with a pipe character, the output will be sent as standard input
to the following pipeline. For example,
–
Specifying the file – will send the files to standard output; this
also requires enabling the –q option.
Initialization files
When looking for the initialization files (gs_*.ps), the files
related to fonts, or the file for the run operator, Ghostscript
first looks for the file (if it doesn't start with a slash) in
the current directory, then in these directories in the following
order:
1. Any directories specified by –I switches in the command line
(see below);
2. Any directories specified by the GS_LIB environment variable;
3. The directories /sys/lib/ghostscript, /sys/lib/ghostscript/font,
and /sys/lib/postscript/font.
The GS_LIB or –I parameters may be a single directory or a colon–separated
list.
Options
–– filename arg1 ...
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Take the next argument as a file name as usual, but take all remaining
arguments (even if they have the syntactic form of switches) and
define the name ARGUMENTS in userdict (not systemdict) as an array
of those strings, before running the file. When Ghostscript finishes
executing the file, it exits back to the
shell.
–
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Dname=token
–dname=token
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Define a name in systemdict with the given definition. The token
must be exactly one token (as defined by the `token' operator)
and must not contain any white space.
–
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Dname
–dname
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Define a name in systemdict with value=null.
–
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Sname=string
–sname=string
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Define a name in systemdict with a given string as value. This
is different from –d. For example, –dname=35 is equivalent to the
program fragment
whereas –sname=35 is equivalent to
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q Quiet startup: suppress normal startup messages, and also do
the equivalent of –dQUIET.
–gnumber1xnumber2
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Equivalent to –dDEVICEWIDTH=number1 and –dDEVICEHEIGHT=number2.
This is for the benefit of devices, such as windows, that allow
width and height to be specified.
–
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rnumber
–rnumber1xnumber2
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Equivalent to –dDEVICEXRESOLUTION=number1 and –dDEVICEYRESOLUTION=
number2. This is for the benefit of devices, such as printers,
that support multiple X and Y resolutions. If only one number
is given, it is used for both X and Y resolutions.
–
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Idirectories
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Adds the designated list of directories at the head of the search
path for library files.
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Note that gs_init.ps makes systemdict read–only, so the values
of names defined with –D/d/S/s cannot be changed (although, of
course, they can be superseded by definitions in userdict or other
dictionaries.)
Special names
–dBATCH
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Exit after the last file has been processed. This is equivalent
to listing quit.ps at the end of the list of files.
–
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dDISKFONTS
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Causes individual character outlines to be loaded from the disk
the first time they are encountered. (Normally Ghostscript loads
all the character outlines when it loads a font.) This may allow
loading more fonts into RAM, at the expense of slower rendering.
–
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dNOCACHE
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Disables character caching. Only useful for debugging.
–
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dNOBIND
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Disables the `bind' operator. Only useful for debugging.
–
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dNODISPLAY
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Suppresses the normal initialization of the output device. This
may be useful when debugging.
–
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dNOPAUSE
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Disables the prompt and pause at the end of each page. This may
be desirable for applications where another program (e.g. page(1))
is `driving' Ghostscript.
–
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dSAFER
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Disables the deletefile and renamefile operators, and the ability
to open files in any mode other than read–only. This may be desirable
for spoolers or other sensitive environments. Files in the /fd
directory may still be opened for writing.
–
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dWRITESYSTEMDICT
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Leaves systemdict writable. This is necessary when running special
utility programs such as font2c and pcharstr, which must bypass
normal PostScript access protection.
–
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sDEVICE=device
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Selects an alternate initial output device, as described above.
–
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sOutputFile=filename
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Selects an alternate output file (or pipe) for the initial output
device, as described above.
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