History of Ghostscript versions 1.n

## Table of contents

> - Version 1.3 (6/20/89)
>   - Interpreter, Fonts, Library, Usage procedures
> - Version 1.2 (2/22/89)
>   - Interpreter, Library, Usage procedures
> - Version 1.1 (2/12/89)
>   - Interpreter, Initialization (ghost.ps, gfonts.ps), Library, Usage procedures
> - Version 1.0 (8/11/88)

This document is a history of Ghostscript releases numbered 1.n. For more recent changes, see the the other history documents and, for the latest versions, the news:

> News
> History of Ghostscript versions 4.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 3.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 2.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 1.n (this document)

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview.

#

##

##

##

##

#

##

##

##

#

##

##

##

##

#

    Version 1.3 (6/20/89)

    This release should have had a lot more things in it, but time pressure
    and the already long delay in getting it out made it necessary to push it
    out the door in an incomplete state (e.g., no testing on X systems
    whatsoever).

    Interpreter

    Makes -d and -D equivalent on the command line.  Adds a new switch -s / -S
    that defines a name as a string rather than a token.

    Arranges things so that if -sLIB=_a_prefix_ is defined on the command
    line, (filename) run will look for _a_prefix_filename before giving up if
    filename isn't the name of an accessible file.

    Changes showpage from an operator to a procedure.  The definition of
    showpage in ghost.ps does a copypage, beeps the console, waits for the
    user to type a character (normally a <return>, since line buffering is
    always enabled), and then does an erasepage and an initgraphics.

    Adds a new initialization file, gdevs.ps, containing device-dependent
    parameters.  The default window size for X Windows is properly set to 612
    x 792, i.e., 8.5" x 11".

    Adds a new optional initialization file, statusd.ps, that provides dummy
    definitions for the names found in statusdict on LaserWriters.

    Adds a new operator, getenv, to get information from the shell
    environment.

    Adds a new predefined operator, defaultdevicename, that returns either (X)
    or (EGA) according to how the interpreter was built.

    Adds a new type, devicetype, and new operators deviceparams, getscanlines,
    makedevice, makeimagedevice, and setdevice.  Changes currentdevice to
    return a device object rather than a set of parameters.

    Makes the scanner recognize reals with 'e' exponent notation, and handle
    reals with more than 9 digits.

    Fixes a bug that made names starting with digits read incorrectly.

    Fixes a bug in the exp operator that made it not pop its first argument
    from the stack.

    Fixes a bug in the rand operator that made it return negative values about
    half the time.

    Fixes a bug in equality comparison (eq, ne, and several other operators)
    that made unequal operator objects occasionally appear to be equal on DOS
    systems.

    Fixes a bug in the bind operator that made it not work on packed arrays.

    Changes the internal representation of dictionaries so they can be
    expanded or contracted dynamically.  Adds a new operator, setmaxlength, to
    change the allocated size of a dictionary.

    Changes sstorei.h so that non-DOS compilers don't encounter the #pragma
    directive used by Turbo C.

    Restores the display mode (on MS-DOS systems) when exiting.

    Fonts

    Makes undefined characters in the standard font display as tilde rather
    than blank (or causing an error).  Unmapped character codes (those mapped
    to .notdef in the encoding) still display as nothing, per the PostScript
    manual.

    Library

    Adds a new header file, gxbitmap.h, with some new documentation describing
    the internal storage format for bitmaps.

    Makes numerous internal changes in the character / font cache, affecting
    many of the routines in gxcache.c.

    Fixes a bug in gz_draw_line / gz_fill_trapezoid that made nearly
    horizontal lines display wrong.

    Fixes a bug in gs_scale that made scaling not work if the coordinate
    system was rotated or skewed.

    Extends the font cache so it will handle characters rotated by multiples
    of 90 degrees.

    Changes the second argument of gx_path_bbox and gx_path_is_rectangle to be
    a gs_fixed_rect * rather than a fixed [4].

    Changes gs_matrix_rotate so it handles multiples of 90 degrees as a
    special case.

    Changes the definition of the gx_device structure to accommodate the new
    device operators, and adds corresponding library calls.

    Changes the type for a device color index from int to gx_color_index
    (equivalent to unsigned long).  ***NOTE***: this affects existing clients
    and drivers in a non-trivial way on MS-DOS systems.

    Changes gs_malloc and gs_free to take a client name string as an argument.

    Usage procedures

    Changes the compilation rules for Unix systems to not use the -o and -c
    compiler flags together, to be compatible with more versions of cc.

    Changes the gcc makefile to use $(GCC) rather than gcc as the compiler
    name.

    Moves the -1 flag for the MS-DOS compiler from the cc*.bat files to the
    makefile.

    Changes CCDEBUG to CCFLAGS, and adds ASMFLAGS, in DOS makefile.

    Adds -DFOR80386 and /DFOR80386 to enable use of 80386 instructions in
    assembly code on DOS systems.

    Merges the DEBUG and gs_DEBUG switches.  There is now only a single DEBUG
    switch that affects both the interpreter and the library.

    Adds a new compilation switch, -DNOPRIVATE, that makes private (static)
    variables and procedures public for debugging and profiling (only needed
    on DOS systems).

    Adds the DOS executable (gs.exe and gs.map) to the distribution fileset.

    Adds new platform-specific code files, gp-*.c, for a few things like
    reading the clock.

    Adds a new documentation file, drivers.doc, that describes the interface
    between Ghostscript and device drivers.

    Version 1.2 (2/22/89)

    Interpreter

    Adds the new facilities in version 25 of PostScript: //name for immediate
    lookup, packed arrays (setpacking, currentpacking, packedarray operators),
    and new font cache parameters (setcacheparams, currentcacheparams
    operators).

    Adds new operators (setfileposition, currentfileposition) for random
    access to files.

    Extends readhexstring to take either a string or a file, just like token.

    Fixes a bug that caused the 'for' operator (and a couple of others) to
    randomly smash memory locations on PC platforms.

    Library

    Renames the init_device driver procedure as open_device, and adds a
    corresponding close_device.

    Adds new procedures to read and set the cache limit values (implementing
    the currentcacheparams and setcacheparams operators).

    Usage procedures

    Changes the name of the Unix makefile to ux-cc-x.mak, and adds a new Unix
    makefile, ux-gcc-x.mak, for using gcc instead of cc.  (The latter doesn't
    actually work yet.)

    Changes the name of the single built-in font from uglyfont.cp to
    ugly10.cp.

    Version 1.1 (2/12/89)

    Interpreter

    Makes the scanner treat ^Z (ASCII code 26) as whitespace: it erroneously
    treated ^R (ASCII code 22, or octal 26) as whitespace.

    Makes the token and readline operators, and the syntax for comments,
    recognize \r (code 13), \n (code 10), and \r\n as equivalent end-of-line
    indicators.  The token and readline operators will skip over any of these
    sequences at the end of a token or line respectively, and a comment will
    read through any of these sequences.  The other file operators (read,
    write, readstring, writestring) do nothing special with these characters.

    Changes the debug switch name from -D to -Z.  Adds a -D switch for
    defining names in systemdict from the command line.  Defines -DDEBUG for
    printing out debugging information during initialization, and -DNODISPLAY
    for suppressing display output.

    Corrects a bug that prevented the error machinery from working -- in
    version 1.0, errors always dumped the stacks and aborted interpretation.

    Corrects a bug that made eq and ne not work for strings.

    Makes the atan (arctangent) operator normalize its results according to
    the PostScript convention.

    Makes the div operator check for zero divisor.

    Makes unimplemented operators (resetfile, echo, save, restore, strokepath,
    reversepath) truly undefined.

    Makes the interactive loop exit gracefully on end-of-file: in version 1.0
    this caused an infinite loop.

    Implements the status operator.

    Corrects a bug that made the 'for' operator deliver garbage values if one
    or more of the operands (start, increment, end) was a real.

    Corrects a bug that made the arc and arcn operators not pop their operands
    from the stack.

    Corrects a bug that made the kshow operator crash the interpreter.

    Corrects a bug that made the print operator fail on machines that don't
    pass structure arguments by simply pushing the contents of the structure.

    Adds a new operator, imagecharpath, to convert images to
    addcharpath-compatible outlines.

    Changes alloc and alloc_free to use char * rather than byte *, and
    alloc_free to return void rather than int, making them compatible with the
    library's expectations and with malloc/free.

    Explicitly casts all expressions of the form (ptr1 - ptr2) used as
    procedure arguments to unsigned, to handle an incompatibility between
    Turbo C versions 1.5 and 2.0.

    Changes some of the internal conventions for operators: operators that
    push on the operand stack must check for overflow explicitly, and
    operators that modify the execution stack must return a special code.
    (See oper.h for details.)

    Initialization (ghost.ps, gfonts.ps)

    Modifies ghost.ps and gfonts.ps so they print debugging information only
    if the name DEBUG is defined.  (Presumably the user will set this from the
    command line with -DDEBUG.)

    Changes ghost.ps so it initializes the nominal screen size to 640 x 350 on
    MS-DOS systems as before, but to 612 x 792 on Unix systems, which is an
    8.5" x 11" page at 72 pixels per inch.

    Library

    Corrects a bug that made the fill and eofill operators (gs_fill and
    gs_eofill) not perform a newpath afterward.

    Corrects the bug that made thin, nearly horizontal lines display wrong (as
    a series of disconnected dots) in the MS-DOS implementation.

    Fixes a bug in the EGA driver that often made it fill rectangular regions
    with black around information being displayed in white.

    Completely changes the internal representation of outline fonts, and
    changes btoi.ps (a Ghostscript language program for converting bitmaps to
    outlines) to use a new library call, gs_imagecharpath.

    Changes the extension for outline font files from .gf to .cp.

    Adds a new debugging switch, q, that traces all rectangle fill operations.

    Adds a new debugging switch, v, that traces all device-level output calls.

    Explicitly casts pointer differences passed as procedure arguments, as in
    the interpreter.

    Makes stringwidth work if there is no current point.  In version 1.0, this
    gave a nocurrentpoint error.

    Usage procedures

    Changes the name of the 'read me' file from READ.ME to README.

    Removes a bogus line (invoking the 'mcopy' utility) from the makefile.

    Splits up the makefile into a generic part (ghost.mak) and
    platform-specific parts (dos-ega.mak, unix-x11.mak).  The latter are what
    is actually executed.

    Puts the definitions of the DEBUG and gs_DEBUG compilation flags into the
    makefile instead of in ghost.h and gx.h respectively.

    Changes the names of the documentation files to be a little less cryptic.
    Changes all the file names to lower-case in the documentation.  Adds
    installation information to make.doc.

    Changes all function definitions (but not prototype declarations) to ANSI
    syntax, and adds a preprocessing step (ansi2knr) to convert them to K&R
    syntax on Unix systems.

    Changes the normal MS-DOS link configuration to not assume the presence of
    an 80x87 coprocessor, and describes how to increase performance if a
    coprocessor is present.

    Changes the names of all the interpreter .c files, except stream.c, to
    begin with 'i'.

    Version 1.0 (8/11/88)

    First version released to the public.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved.

This file is part of Aladdin Ghostscript. See the Aladdin Free Public License (the "License") for full details of the terms of using, copying, modifying, and redistributing Aladdin Ghostscript.

Ghostscript version 6.0, 3 February 2000