Re: Ghostrscript/GhostPDL 9.16 Release Candidate 1

Thanks, as always, Nelson, for taking the time to test for us.

On 19/03/15 18:33, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> Chris Liddell <[email protected]> reports today
>
>>> ...
>>> I have created archives for the first release candidates for Ghostscript
>>> and GhostPDL 9.16, and they are available here:
>>>
>>> http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/.release_candidate/
>>> ...
>
> I have successfully installed it on Red Hat 6 GNU/Linux x86-64,
> and three dozen more platforms will soon follow.
>
> However, in looking at the ghostpdl-9.16rc1/README.txt file, I find
>
>>> ...
>>> .... This will create four different
>>> executables: main/obj/pcl6, a build of GhostPCL with support for
>>> PCL5e, PCL5c, and PXL, language_switch/obj/pspcl6 a build of GhostPCL
>>> with additional support for PostScript and PDF, xps/obj/gxps a build
>>> with support for XPS and finally svg/obj/gsvg the SVG implementation.
>>> ...
>
> When I did the build, it created main/obj/pcl6 and xps/obj/gxps, but
> the other two were not made.

SVG has been dropped, and language_switch is being revamped as the old 
implementation was unreliable. For now, PCL/PXL and XPS are the only 
supported PDLs at this level.

> The "make install" target only installs the pcl6 executable, which is
> also at variance with the README.txt file.

I don't see a list of what the install target does, so.... it probably 
should act on the XPS executable, but as it's never worked that way. To 
be honest, the fact that no one has noticed before does hint at the 
relevance of XPS to the wider world!


> Are these minor glitches in the Makefile(s), or a case of
> documentation not matching the code?  There are no executables named
> gsvg or pspcl6 in the completed-build tree.

Mainly documentation that has gone stale, I'll sort it out.

The PCL, XPS and language_switching builds are all being substantially 
revamped, *hopefully* for the next release, so I'm loathe to devote a 
lot of time to soon to be deprecated stuff.

> Finally, I noted some spelling errors:
>
> 	ghostpdl-9.16rc1/README.txt:
> 		implemenation	->	implementation
>
>
> 	ghostscript-9.16rc1/doc/{Details8.htm,History8.htm} [several instances]
> 		recieved	->	received
>
> The advent of a new release is a good time to fix spelling errors and
> other typos in documentation.

TBH, Ghostscript 8.x has been unsupported for some years, I don't plan 
to continue supporting the changelogs for it either.

Chris