Recent changes in Ghostscript

# Changes in the most recent release of Ghostscript

This document is news about the most recent Ghostscript release. For earlier versions, see the history documents:

> History of Ghostscript versions 8.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 7.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 6.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 5.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 4.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 3.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 2.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 1.n

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview.

### Version 8.62 (2008-02-29)

This version is the next in our line of scheduled semi-annual releases.

There were approximately 55 bugs fixed since version 8.61. Some fixes and improvements of note were:

COMPILE_INITS=1 was broken in 8.61 and now works as expected.

Fonts are now distributed in the Resource/Font directory and will be included in the executable if COMPILE_INITS=1

The tiffsep device was fixed for using more than 8 colorants.

Shadings, overprinting and transparency were optimized and are substantially faster than in 8.61, particularly for large format or high resolution rendering when using the 'clist' banding mode.

Changes were made to prevent near unbounded growth in memory usage and corresponding performance problems on a few test cases.

The 'pdfwrite' device was improved to fix some compatibility issues with PDF/A and to improve some font embedding and other issues.

The 'ht_ccsto.ps' Stochastic Threshold array was completely changed to be more useful. The values in the threshold array were inverted, so the number of 'light' colors was limited and using it generally caused prints that were too dark.

The 'runpdfbegin', 'dopdfpages' and 'runpdfend' PostScript pseudo-operators that were inadvertently removed in 8.61 were restored. This also restored the functionality of toolbin/pdf_info.ps to display PDF creator stats, fonts used and page sizes.

The halftone tile cache sizes and cache effectiveness were improved to help the performance when tiling with large cells or threshold arrays.

The following bugs were open at the time of release:

> 465936, 578865, 626295, 686747, 686853, 687011, 687146, 687257, 687271, 687280, 687295, 687327, 687514, 687520, 687531, 687608, 687650, 687674, 687677, 687695, 687697, 687702, 687721, 687728, 687729, 687796, 687805, 687814, 687850, 687903, 687904, 687957, 687974, 688007, 688022, 688026, 688032, 688036, 688042, 688058, 688061, 688064, 688066, 688075, 688081, 688095, 688129, 688130, 688151, 688152, 688159, 688166, 688184, 688187, 688207, 688215, 688227, 688239, 688269, 688280, 688288, 688317, 688318, 688320, 688333, 688342, 688358, 688359, 688360, 688361, 688363, 688372, 688378, 688386, 688387, 688389, 688395, 688413, 688427, 688428, 688436, 688437, 688440, 688446, 688475, 688483, 688500, 688515, 688517, 688528, 688533, 688539, 688540, 688542, 688543, 688557, 688580, 688581, 688588, 688601, 688604, 688605, 688610, 688615, 688616, 688619, 688627, 688636, 688638, 688646, 688651, 688653, 688655, 688673, 688674, 688696, 688699, 688709, 688710, 688714, 688717, 688728, 688736, 688739, 688757, 688770, 688774, 688778, 688796, 688797, 688807, 688811, 688813, 688815, 688829, 688843, 688846, 688876, 688908, 688918, 688919, 688926, 688928, 688933, 688942, 688943, 688952, 688958, 688969, 688976, 688986, 688990, 688992, 688999, 689003, 689011, 689013, 689014, 689022, 689025, 689028, 689031, 689040, 689044, 689046, 689048, 689057, 689058, 689080, 689081, 689090, 689093, 689094, 689098, 689111, 689116, 689128, 689129, 689130, 689133, 689136, 689137, 689138, 689145, 689146, 689148, 689150, 689153, 689154, 689159, 689161, 689164, 689172, 689174, 689181, 689184, 689195, 689198, 689206, 689209, 689210, 689222, 689224, 689230, 689236, 689246, 689247, 689248, 689252, 689253, 689264, 689279, 689280, 689281, 689283, 689289, 689290, 689291, 689304, 689305, 689308, 689313, 689331, 689335, 689340, 689341, 689343, 689358, 689361, 689363, 689364, 689367, 689370, 689373, 689376, 689378, 689396, 689402, 689412, 689418, 689419, 689422, 689428, 689431, 689438, 689439, 689440, 689444, 689445, 689448, 689450, 689451, 689456, 689460, 689462, 689463, 689469, 689471, 689476, 689484, 689487, 689488, 689489, 689490, 689498, 689499, 689500, 689502, 689507, 689509, 689510, 689512, 689514, 689515, 689516, 689518, 689521, 689522, 689532, 689534, 689535, 689538, 689542, 689543, 689546, 689547, 689549, 689552, 689554, 689557, 689559, 689560, 689561, 689563, 689566, 689567, 689573, 689574, 689579, 689581, 689583, 689585, 689588, 689591, 689592, 689595, 689598, 689601, 689606, 689607, 689609, 689610, 689618, 689621, 689623, 689627, 689628, 689632, 689636, 689637, 689641, 689649, 689652, 689653, 689654, 689657, 689658, 689659, 689663, 689666, 689668, 689669, 689673, 689674, 689675, 689676, 689677, 689681, 689682, 689684, 689685, 689687, 689689, 689690, 689691, 689692, 689693, 689697, 689698, 689699, 689702, 689704, 689705, 689709, 689710, 689711, 689712, 689713, 689715, 689716, 689721, 689722, 689723, 689725, 689727.

### Incompatible changes

Not strictly a compatibility issue, but the default URW (GPL) fonts are now distributed in the Resource/Font/ path which can increase the number of file handles open for PostScript that opens all of the resources. Also the size of the %rom% rom file system within the executable when using COMPILE_INITS=1 is larger by the amount needed for the fonts.

Also not strictly incompatible, but some alternate fixed-point code was stripped out, so FPU_TYPE and other FPU related makefile macros are gone or don't cause any difference in the code generated. Also the 'USE_ASM' macro was removed, since we expect modern compilers to do sufficient optimization.

Some old (deprecated) "helper" scripts were removed: gsindent, gssubst, many2pdf.tcl, and pre.

The unused 'cmap' (special color mapping) and 'ropc' devices were removed from the distribution.

The 'ht_ccsto.ps' Stochastic Threshold array was completely changed to be more useful. The values in the threshold array were inverted, so the number of 'light' colors was limited and using it generally caused prints that were too dark. This is an improvement, but incompatible in that anyone using it previously would see much different grays/ colors.

The SYSTEM_CONSTANTS_ARE_WRITABLE compile time define was removed as was the "EXTEND_NAMES" makefile macro (still accessible using a compiler flag define).

### Changelog

See the history file for complete log of changes.

Copyright © 2005-2008 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of that license. Refer to licensing information at http://www.artifex.com/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 7 Mt. Lassen Drive - Suite A-134, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861, for further information.

Ghostscript version 8.62, 29 February 2008