Ghostscript - Giving up the GPL ghost?

[pnkearns]

I am wondering if anyone has successfully used Ghostscript in a recent development project?

Some friends and I were contemplating developing a free PDF/PS application for the Mac based on Ghostscript GPL. If you look at Ghostscript source code and other items on the Ghostscript: Ghostscript website, the documentation seems to be a listing of C/postscript source code, a few lines of comments thrown in, and a 1 or 2 page conceptual overview consisting of listing the major code segments and the files used for compiling. It doesn't give any idea of how the code works. I can just start working through the code trying to understand it, and hand parsing PDF examples, but that is a long process. There doesn't seem to be any real developer documentation, tutorials or examples. The only user manual you can find via Google searches was written 10 years ago on Ghostscript version 5. The latest Ghostscript on the website is version 8.6.

I have sent multiple emails to Artifex, the company responsible for Ghostscript licensing in business applications, but have not received a response.

Regards,
Patrick
patrick@niyi.org

[almaink]

I know Scribus uses Ghostscript but no idea if they have it documented. Might be worth a look.

[pnkearns]

Unfortunately, Scribus has nothing.

[made4print]

Hi,

I have done some extensive development using GhostScript on Windows (with Microsoft .NET), on Windows one has 2 routes, either using the command line executable or using the ghostscript dll directly. I dont know much about macs but assuming there is a commandline application, is it possible to develop around that?

If you want to develop for PC, We can certainly help you out in giving you code to talk to the dll directly and give you some pointers.

Having said all this, GhostScript has licensing restrictions with regards distribution if you dont have an OEM license.

If you need any further information, please contact me (mark@made4print.com)

Hope this helps,

Mark

Mark Redman
Made4Print Limited