Talk:Ghostscript

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Contents 1 Origin of tiger.eps? (aka "cubic spline tiger") 2 CutePDF Adware? 3 Application or Toolbox of APIs? 4 Export formats?

[edit] Origin of tiger.eps? (aka "cubic spline tiger")

I wonder if the tiger.eps file (a.k.a. "cubic spline tiger") that comes with Ghostscript is worthy of note in this article (see http://www.levien.com/svg/ for the image I'm referring to). The file seems to have taken on a life of its own, as it seems to be the standard test image of just about every piece of vector graphics software out there (especially SVG software). I would write something about it, but I'm very fuzzy on the details. In particular:

• Did it originate with Ghostscript?
• Is it an original work of Aladdin Software, or is it derived from an older public domain source?
• Is the information in the header correct? (e.g. CreationDate: 4/12/90 3:20 AM)
• Who created it?

Here's the source code for tiger.eps from ghostscript.com. Anyone with more knowledge on the subject up for taking a crack at it? -- RobLa 07:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CutePDF Adware?

Is there a source of for the assertion that CutePDF has adware? I'm not aware that it does.

Evidently a bundled plug-in at one point incorporated adware. See: [1] 12.38.23.162 21:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Application or Toolbox of APIs?

This article needs to do a better job of explaining if this is application software, or a toolbox of support modules.--69.87.193.22 13:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

What is the difference? It seems to meet both of those descriptions. Notinasnaid 13:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Export formats?

Can Ghostscript export PDF files to other file formats?--69.87.193.22 13:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a very broad question, but in general the answer is yes. If you have command-line Ghostscript, you can see how by executing devicenames ==; some of the export drivers are for printers (declj250, I'm guessing), but there are image-format drivers such as tiffpack, bmpmono, xcf, pnm, pnmraw, jpeggray, pngmono and a large list of others. The list is implicitly larger than you think, because one can export to PNM or something like it and encode to any format that ImageMagick supports. (For instance.) There's a separate tool, pstoedit, to generate vector formats if you need that. If you're asking if it can export a PDF to something like a Word document, that would be like unbaking a cookie. There are tools to do so, but they're pretty complicated, and the results aren't exactly what went into the PDF in the first place. Ghostscript does not, to my knowledge, Does that answer your question? grendel|khan 14:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)