PS Viewer 2.0 Release Notes

The most recent version of this file is available here. Release notes for all versions of the PS Viewer are available here.

The PS Viewer is a Level 2 PostScript viewer which can either be used stand-alone, embeddable in a user application or as an applet.

The Viewer will handle most PostScript commands, but some restrictions apply, see our bug database.

PostScript Compliance

This viewer implements most of the PostScript Level 2 commands and some of the Level 3 commands. For a description of PostScript see the PostScript Language Reference Manual, Third Edition from Adobe Systems Inc.

Major changes in the PS Viewer 2.0

  • PSVIEWER: see Fixed Bugs
  • FREEHEP-393: Command Line Argument parsing now uses org.freehep.util.argv package.
  • FREEHEP-400: A PSDevice class was added with a VirtualDevice and a PanelDevice to cope with the PageBoundingBox, BoundingBox and multiple pages, including the Raster erasePage operation. It also allows for zooming into the page (-s) and specifying a translation (-tx, -ty).
  • FREEHEP-398: One page from a multiple page PS file can be viewed (-p), but the document still needs to be fully read up to the page to be displayed. In future we may want to add DSC handling to split documents into pages.
  • FREEHEP-151: MatrixOperators DefaultMatrix and InitMatrix should keep using the Identity Matrix.
  • FREEHEP-126: ArithmeticOperators now return PSDouble if the result is not in an PSInteger range.
  • FREEHEP-160: PathBBox now handles explicitly set BoundingBox.
  • FREEHEP-167 (partial): SetBBox now in use.
  • FREEHEP-150: ScaleFont and MakeFont return a copy of the font.
  • FREEHEP-159: CharPath now uses boolean "strokepath" to create a stroked path if necessary.
  • FREEHEP-401: Fonts only turned upside-down when glyphs are produced. CurrentFont now returns proper font and matrix, MakeFont takes size of previous CurrentFont call into account.
  • FREEHEP-143: CvI and CvRS report RangeCheck errors.
  • FREEHEP-125: Document Structuring Conventions (DSC) level 3.0 implemented to parse for instance BoundingBox and Page.
  • FREEHEP-402: Scanner ignores lines starting with @ so that @PCL can be left in the PostScript file.
  • FREEHEP-403: PSName ignores names starting with an "ESC" character.
  • FREEHEP-404: ClassCastException fixed in Copy command when PackedArrays are used.

Documentation

The following documentation is currently available:

Features/Limitations of the Current Release

The following limitations exist:

  • All outstanding issues in the Bug Database.
  • All images using 12 bits/component probably will not work.

Reporting Bugs

To report bugs or request enhancements you may use the FreeHEP bug database.

Examples

The examples directory contains:

  • EmbedPSViewer.java which shows how to embed 2 PSViewers in one application
  • PStoSWF.java which shows how to build a converter from PostScript to Macromedia Flash Format (SWF).