[Gs-devel] ghostscript-7.0, and PDF files under MacOSX (Aqua)

[Bernd Heller]

On Wednesday, April 25, 2001, at 11:04 PM, Tom Kacvinsky wrote:

> Hi Nelson,
>
> I have tried out Nernd Heller's MacGsView for OS X.  There were some
> display problems, but those come from the base gs 7.0 code, not the
> port to OS X. The only problem I have seen so for is that text alpha 
> bots
> has to be 1 in order for the fonts to display properly.  Bernd is aware
> of the issue.

Nelson,

Your users have two options:
1. they can use the OS X preview version of MacGSView to display their 
PostScript or PDF files
2. they can use Acrobat Reader 5.0 to display their PDF files

I would not recommend Apple's Preview application for anything else than 
previewing print jobs. It has several bugs and problems and is not very 
nice to use for document reading.

> Now, as for Apple's built in PDF viewer:  it only supports a subset of
> the PDF spec, if I am not mistaken.  The Quartz engine in OS X (which
> is a PDF version of QuickDraw/Display PostScript) is not robust at this
> time, that is for sure.

I think Tom is right that only a subset of the PDF spec is implemented 
in Aqua. However, I cannot agree that it is not robust, I have not seen 
any problems with the Quartz engine yet (which does not mean that there 
aren't any, of course).

By the way: for future Mac related questions, the list mac-
gs at ghostscript.com is a more appropriate place


Bernd