tlug: "L. Peter Deutsch": Announcing the release of Aladdin Ghostscript 5.0

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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Thought you all might like to know.  My subjective opinion is that 5.0
is significantly faster than 3.53, which has not yet been released to
GNU.  Most of you are probably using 3.33 if you are using the stock
gs on most distributions.  (Debian, for example, has to put gs > v3.33 
in non-free.)

Many of you don't need the new features, I expect, but passing the
Genoa CET means much more stability (escher.ps dpes not crash the
interpreter any more), with PDF 1.2 support you can now reliably
directly feed PDF files to lpr and in combination with the gv
front-end get good performance in on-screen viewing of PDF files.  And
many of the drivers, especially for color ink-jet printers, have been
improved.

The CID/CMap support will eventually mean much better support for
Kanji (no more 3 versions of the same font for different encodings and 
TeX and that and this).

------- Forwarded Message
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 97 16:15 PDT
From: "L. Peter Deutsch" <ghost@example.com>
To: gs-5.0-announce@example.com
Subject: Announcing the release of Aladdin Ghostscript 5.0
Reply-to: ghost@example.com

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@example.com to encourage Cygnus
to make this change).  If you have opinions about what compilers we should
support, please let us know at ghost@example.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@example.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@example.com

				Thanks -

L. Peter Deutsch         |       Aladdin Enterprises :::: ghost@example.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."

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