[NTLUG:Discuss] GS and Postscript debugging.

[Steve Baker]

Christopher Browne wrote:

> % gs
> Aladdin Ghostscript 5.50 (1998-9-16)

OK - I have 5.10 which comes with SuSE 6.2 - installed with all the
defaults 'out of the box'.

> Copyright (C) 1998 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights reserved.
> This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
> GS>/Times-Roman findfont
> Loading NimbusRomNo9L-Regu font from /usr/lib/ghostscript/fonts/n021003l.pfb... 1883292 570593 1309076 23449 0 done.

Hmmm - your machine is obviously finding a suitable font.  I have no /usr/lib/ghostscript directory...

My 'gs' run says:

  Can't find (or can't open) font file n021003l.pfb.
  Can't find (or can't open) font file NimbusRomNo9L-Regu.
  Can't find (or can't open) font file NimbusRomNo9L-Regu.
  Substituting font Courier for NimbusRomNo9L-Regu.
  Can't find (or can't open) font file n022003l.pfb.
  Can't find (or can't open) font file NimbusMonL-Regu.
  Can't find (or can't open) font file NimbusMonL-Regu.
  Unable to substitute for font.
  Error: /invalidfont in findfont

Then you had:

> GS<1>15 scalefont setfont
> GS>(Hello World) show
> Error: /nocurrentpoint in --show--

Oops - I missed a '72 72 moveto' line in my example - but don't worry
about it - the relevent fact is that your 'gs' finds the font and mine
doesn't.

I'd suspect something not installed correctly - but the weird thing is
that it works just fine if I use 'lpr' to print the same file. (I have
a cheap inkjet printer that can't do Postscript - so it must be using
Ghostscript - which is working in that context).

> It *sounds* like something is going wrong with the font path; could
> you be a bit more specific as to what messages get emitted?

See above.
 
> It may also be relevant to know things like:
> a) What version of GS

5.10

> b) What distribution

SuSE 6.2

> c) What the Fontmap file looks like, and where it is

OK - you lost me.  Where is this Fontmap file and where should it be?
That sounds like the thing I'm missing.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker at hti.com      (work)