[NTLUG:Discuss] GS and Postscript debugging.

[Christopher Browne]

On Sat, 08 Jan 2000 00:07:34 CST, the world broke into rejoicing as
Steve Baker <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>  said:
> 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 reserve
d.
> > 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.pf
b... 1883292 570593 1309076 23449 0 done.
> 
> Hmmm - your machine is obviously finding a suitable font.  I have no /usr/lib
/ghostscript directory...

Hm. 

- That may imply a missing fonts package.  You may have installed
  Ghostscript, but no fonts.  This is a quite likely option.

- Fonts sometimes reside under /usr/share/ghostscript; take a look
  there.

> 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

Sure sounds like the fonts aren't there.

> 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.

Indeed.

> 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).

That's *quite* odd.

> > 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.

Try:

# rpm -q -a | grep -i font

That will list all installed font packages.  Ghostscript fonts might
be the package "gsfonts."

# rpm -q -l gsfonts

(or whatever it really should be) will list the contents, and should
locate where Fontmap actually is.

Fontmap is a file that lists the mappings of font names (e.g. -
Times-Roman) to the filenames of the .pfb files that actually contain
the fonts.

You should be able to locate a file in the Ghostscript documentation
entitled "Use.htm" which contains the gory details as to how one uses
such environment variables as GS_LIB, GS_LIB_DEFAULT, and GS_FONTPATH
to locate the fonts; this should be set pretty appropriately in gs by
default.

--
"Genius  may   have  its  limitations,  but  stupidity   is  not  thus
handicapped." -- cbbrowne at csi.uottawa.edu
cbbrowne at ntlug.org - - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>