Copyright (C) 1996 Aladdin Enterprises.  All rights reserved.
  
  This file is part of Aladdin Ghostscript.
  
  Aladdin Ghostscript is distributed with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.  No author
  or distributor accepts any responsibility for the consequences of using it,
  or for whether it serves any particular purpose or works at all, unless he
  or she says so in writing.  Refer to the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public
  License (the "License") for full details.
  
  Every copy of Aladdin Ghostscript must include a copy of the License,
  normally in a plain ASCII text file named PUBLIC.  The License grants you
  the right to copy, modify and redistribute Aladdin Ghostscript, but only
  under certain conditions described in the License.  Among other things, the
  License requires that the copyright notice and this notice be preserved on
  all copies.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This file, new-user.txt, provides background information for new users.

For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see
README.

********
******** An overview of Ghostscript ********
********

Ghostscript is the name of a set of software that provides:

	- An interpreter for the PostScript (TM) language and the Adobe
Portable Document Format (PDF -- sometimes confused with Acrobat, Adobe's
PDF browser/editor product), and

	- A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library) that implement
the graphics and filtering (data compression / decompression / conversion)
capabilities that appear as primitive operations in the PostScript language
and in PDF.

How is Ghostscript licensed?  Where can I find it?
--------------------------------------------------

Ghostscript is a copyrighted work (Aladdin Enterprises owns the copyright);
it is not shareware or in the public domain.  Different versions of it are
distributed with three different licenses:

	- Versions entitled "Aladdin Ghostscript" are distributed with a
license called the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License that allows free
use, copying, and distribution by end users, but does not allow commercial
distribution.  You can always get the current version of Aladdin
Ghostscript with this license by Internet FTP from
	ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/ghostscript*NNNN*
or, if you run AFS, by direct reference to
	/afs/cs.wisc.edu/public/ghost/aladdin/ghostscript*NNNN*
where NNNN is the version number.  If you do not have convenient access to
the Internet, Aladdin Enterprises can send you Aladdin Ghostscript on
PC-compatible diskettes for a small fee; please contact Aladdin for more
information.  The address and phone number are given later on in this
document.  Please note that this is not "commercial licensing"; you are
still getting freely redistributable software, with no support and no
warranty.

	- Versions entitled "GNU Ghostscript" are distributed with the GNU
General Public License, which allows free use, and free copying and
redistribution under certain conditions (including, in some cases,
commercial distribution).  GNU Ghostscript versions are released
approximately a year after the corresponding Aladdin Ghostscript version.
You can always get the current version of GNU Ghostscript by Internet FTP
from
	ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/gnu/ghostscript*NNNN*
or, if you run AFS, by direct reference to
	/afs/cs.wisc.edu/public/ghost/gnu/ghostscript*NNNN*
or from any of the GNU distribution sites, such as ftp.uu.net:/systems/gnu
or gatekeeper.dec.com:/pub/GNU; you can also get GNU Ghostscript on tape
or CD-ROM from the Free Software Foundation.  For a more complete list of
sites, including sites outside the U.S., send e-mail to
gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.

	- Versions of Ghostscript are also available for commercial
licensing.  See the next section for details.

Aladdin Ghostscript and GNU Ghostscript come with NO WARRANTY and NO
SUPPORT.  If you have a question or a bug to report, please see the
section "If you need help" below for information about what to do.

The Ghostscript source code distribution, and the Ghostscript executable
code, include the following libraries obtained from other parties:

	- The Independent JPEG Group (IJG) library.  The executable versions
of Ghostscript are based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
For more information, please see the file jpeg.mak in the main Ghostscript
source directory, and the README file in the jpeg subdirectory of the
Ghostscript source code.

	- The PNG library created by Dave Martindale, Guy Eric Schalnat,
Paul Schmidt, and Tim Wegner, of Group 42, Inc.  For more information,
please see the libpng.mak file in the main Ghostscript source directory, and
the files readme.txt and png.h in the libpng subdirectory of the Ghostscript
source code.

	- The zlib library created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.  For
more information, please see the zlib.mak file in the main Ghostscript
source directory, and the README file in the zlib subdirectory of the
Ghostscript source code.

These libraries do NOT fall under either the GNU License or the Aladdin
Ghostscript Free Public License; they come with their own licenses, which
also allow free use and redistribution under appropriate circumstances and
which appear in the files referenced just above.  These libraries are
entirely original works of their respective authors, and are provided "AS
IS" with NO WARRANTY and NO SUPPORT.

What about commercial use?
--------------------------

GNU Ghostscript may not be incorporated into commercial products which
forbid copying or for which customers cannot obtain source code for no more
than the cost of reproduction, although it may be distributed ("aggregated")
with commercial products; Aladdin Ghostscript may not be incorporated into
commercial products at all, and may only be distributed commercially under
extremely limited circumstances.  However, Ghostscript is also available for
commercial licensing, which in addition to the right to incorporate
Ghostscript into commercial products includes support, a limited warranty,
high-quality fonts, and other benefits.  For more information about
commercial licensing of Ghostscript, please contact Aladdin Enterprises'
commercial distribution partner, the only entity legally authorized to
distribute Ghostscript per se on any terms other than the GNU or Aladdin
free licenses:

		Licensing Information
		Artifex Software Inc.
		454 Las Gallinas Ave., suite 108
		San Rafael, CA 94903  U.S.A.
		voice +1-415-492-9861
		fax +1-415-492-9862
		e-mail: info@arsoft.com

Currently, Artifex does not offer commercial support as a separate service;
support is available only to OEM licensees.

What platforms does Ghostscript run on?
---------------------------------------

Ghostscript is written entirely in C (with some optional assembly-language
accelerators for MS-DOS platforms), with special care taken to make it run
properly on systems of either byte order and of various word lengths.

GNU Ghostscript is known to run on the following platform families:

	- A wide variety of Unix systems using X Windows version 11, release
	  4, 5, and 6, including Sun-3, Sun-4, Sun-386i, and Sun
	  SPARCStation; generic 80386/486/Pentium machines running Linux,
	  386/ix, FreeBSD, ISC Unix, SCO Unix, and Solaris; H-P 9000/300 and
	  9000/800; DECStation 2100 and 3100; VAX running Ultrix and OSF/1;
	  Sequent Symmetry; Convex C1 and C2; Tektronix 4300; SGI Iris
	  Indigo; 4.4bsd Unix systems (FreeBSD (intel), NetBSD (intel,
	  sparc, m68k (apple, amiga, sun & hp) and vax) and 386BSD (intel)).

	- Sun workstations (Sun-3, SPARC, Sun-386i) running SunView;

	- VAX or AXP systems running VMS with X11R4/5 and DEC C or gcc.

Aladdin Ghostscript is known to run on all of the above, and additionally
the following platform families:

	- IBM PC and compatibles with EGA, VGA, SuperVGA, or compatible
	  graphics under MS-DOS 3.1, 3.3, 5.0, or 6.22, and Microsoft
	  Windows 3.1, NT, or 95;

	- IBM PC and compatibles under DR DOS 6.0;

	- IBM PC and compatibles under OS/2 2.0, 2.1 and Warp 3.0.

        - Macintosh with System 7 or later, both 680x0 and PowerPC native.
          For specific information on the Macintosh implementation, please
          see http://www.glyphic.com/glyphic/projects/macgs.html

It is very likely that Ghostscript will run under other versions of MS-DOS,
and other versions of Unix that support X11, but it has not been tested in
these environments.  (Ghostscript does not run well on PC-compatibles with
Hercules display cards, since text and graphics output interfere with each
other, but you can work around this by redirecting the text output to a file.)

Ghostscript has also been ported to a number of platforms by users, who are
willing to be contacted regarding problems on those specific platforms:

	- For information and possibly precompiled binaries for NeXT
	machines, contact Alan Barclay <escribe@wintermute.co.uk>,
	in the U.K. at +44-1224-591779 (voice & fax).

	- For information on a port to the Amiga, contact Andreas Maschke
	(epgbc@cluster6.urz.uni-halle.de).  This port includes drivers for
		IFF (file format)
		RETINA (graphics board) and
		INTUI (Amiga Window system)
	by Andreas Heitmann (andreas@gotcha.swb.de).

	- For information on a port to the Atari ST, contact Tim
	Gallivan (timg@landau.ph.utexas.edu).

	- For information on a port to the Acorn Archimedes, contact
	David Elworthy (David.Elworthy@cl.cam.ac.uk).

********
******** Related work
********

PDF encryption
--------------

A user outside the U.S. has created code that allows processing of encrypted
PDF files.  Unfortunately, current U.S. export control laws don't allow
redistribution of this code from a site in the U.S., even though it's freely
available to anyone anywhere in the world from its author's site, so you'll
have to get this code from:

	http://www.ozemail.com.au/~geoffk/pdfencrypt/pdf_sec.ps

If that doesn't work, try:

	http://www.ozemail.com.au/%7Egeoffk/pdfencrypt/pdf_sec.ps

The patch consists entirely of PostScript code, so it can be added to a
running version of Ghostscript -- you don't have to recompile anything.  It
is a single file that replaces the file pdf_sec.ps in the standard
Ghostscript fileset.

Previewers
----------

The Ghostscript user interface is very primitive, so several people have
contributed screen previewers with better user interfaces.

We know of two freely available X Windows screen previewers based on
Ghostscript: Ghostview and GSPreview.  For information on Ghostview, contact
Tim Theisen (ghostview@cs.wisc.edu).  For information on GSPreview, contact
Richard Hesketh (rlh@ukc.ac.uk).

There is a freely available previewer for OpenVMS (both VAX and AXP) called
GhostView-VMS or gv-vms, derived from Tim Theisen's Ghostview 1.5 by
Johannes Plass (PLASS@dipmza.physik.Uni-Mainz.DE).  Some places you can find
it are:
	WWW:
	  http://www.wku.edu/htbin/fileserv?X11KIT
	FTP:
	  site:  ftp.wku.edu
	  file:  VMS/FILESERV/X11Kit.ZIP
	  site:  nic.switch.ch
	  file:  mirror/vms/spc/macro32/savesets/x11kit.zip
	  site:  ada.cenaath.cena.dgac.fr
	  files: DECWINDOWS/XAW3D/
	  site:  axp.psl.ku.dk
	  files: DECWINDOWS/XAW3D/

There is a freely available MS Windows screen previewer based on
Ghostscript, called GSview, and a similar OS/2 previewer.