Ghostscript 6.50 for BeOS R5

This archive contains the original sources to Ghostscript 6.50 in the directory src, the diffs to existing files in the "BeOS-diffs" file (so you can patch them to get sources that will compile on the BeOS R5 x86 - not tested on PPC), and sources that are unique to the BeOS port (in src.local).  To build, apply the patches, copy the files in src.local into src, and make.

You will also need libjpeg.so and the accompanying header files jconfig.h, jerror.h, jmemsys.h, jmorecfg.h, and jpeglib.h.  Note that you need patched versions of the library because of a slight discrepancy between the official JPEG specs and the one Adobe adopted for Postscript.

I will try to get this to work on my BeBox as well, but my dear Blinkenlights are in a different country from me right now.  If you can't wait and/or have a nice fast Mac to fiddle with, please tell me what you had to to to get it to build right, and I'll happily include the instructions in the archive.  The interesting part will no doubt be in the makefile, since producing a shared library on PPC is substantially different from x86.

Note that most of the work for this port, i.e. writing a BeOS device and front end, was done by Jake Hamby (jehamby@lightside.com).  They were taken from his Ghostscript 5.5 port and fiddled with a bit to get them to work with 6.01, since I was not able to reach him.  I later grabbed the 6.50 version, which was substantially easier to port (given the experience gained with 6.01).

The excellent anti-aliasing drivers are the work of Michael Pfeiffer, michael.pfeiffer@utanet.at.
Device	  Sample Size	Description 
bealpha2		2x2		anti-alias text and graphics 
bealpha4		4x4		anti-alias text and graphics
bealpht2		2x2		anti-alias text only
bealpht4		4x4		anti-alias text noly <recommended>

Note that anti-aliasing uses more memory and is slower, but yields significantly better results when viewing on screen.


The focus of my port was enabling the use of the shared lib from other programs, most notably inside my EPS translator (included with Becasso).  This means the front end is far from fancy.

Note that you only need this archive when you are interested in building Ghostscript 6.50 yourself.  The license requires me to make the sources available at the same place as the compiled binaries, so here you go.

For use, you will also need the fonts package (which, besides fonts, also contains other stuff Ghostscipt needs).

For any matters regarding this port, please contact me at gs@sumware.demon.nl

Cheers,
Sander Stoks