🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings,

This may not be the right place for questions about Ghostscript, but 
I didn't see any group that did, so here goes:

I am using Ghostscript to generate rasterized representations of Postscript files
for a page layout sorta application (and, I might add, it works great!).  The output
drivers I am using are the pcx drivers (mono and 256) and having the output go to stdout.

I invoke gs with a command like:

  echo "($1) run" | gs -DNOPAUSE -q -DERR -sDEVICE=pcx256 -sOUTPUTFILE=\|/bin/cat -

where $1 = .ps filename
     
The -q and -DNOPAUSE options work well to keep regular messages from appearing in
the output stream.  But the problem arises when I get error messages from gs.  They
print to stdout.  The non-standard option -DERR above is my attempt to still get the
error messages, while keeping them out of stdout.  Basically what that option does is:

currentdict /ERR known   /ERR exch def
% If special flag 'ERR' is given create a error file
% for reporting errors.
ERR {
	/.stderr (/tmp/GS_errors.txt) (w) file def
	/.stdout (/tmp/GS_output.txt) (w) file def
	/print  {.stdout exch writestring .stdout flushfile} def
	/eprint {.stderr exch writestring .stderr flushfile} def
} if

(Notice the lame hardcoded error message files!)

If the error flag is set, then create two files (.stdout, and .stderr) and redefines
the print function (operator? I am a real GhostScript (that language that bears 
remarkable similarities to P*stScr*pt) novice).

I redefine the print operator because some routines still use it even when -q is given.
I also define a special version of print (eprint) that I use in the errorhandler
so that I can get a report of the errors that happen without having other output mixed
in.  (I also had to change the ==only procedure to output to .stderr, to get the error
reports to look good, even though I know this is probably not what I want to do in general)


Well now that I have wheezed on about this long enough, I ask:

 "How do others handle this?"  I.e.
         . Run GhostScript in a sorta batch mode, 
         . Get rasters down stdout,
         . While getting errors along some other path.

 Or, am I going about this all wrong, since my application is X-based, should
 I try to leverage the GhostView hooks for writing directly to a shared Pixmap?
 What sort of success can I expect with this method?

 I don't think I would be able to use the GhostView widget directly however.


Any help (of any sort, even your experiences with using GhostScript in this way)
  would be greatly appreciated!

p.s. I am using version 2.4.1, should I get gs2.5?

Thanks,
  Brett Harper

brett.harper@cimlinc.com