History of Ghostscript versions 8.xx

## Table of contents

> - Version 8.00 (2002-11-21)
>   - Incompatible changes, Documentation, Procedures, Utilities, Drivers, PDF writer, PDF Interpreter, Interpreter, Library

This document is a record of changes in Ghostscript releases numbered 8.xx. For earlier versions, see the the history documents:

> History of Ghostscript versions 7.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 6.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 5.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 4.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 3.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 2.n
> History of Ghostscript versions 1.n

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview.

Within each release, news appears in the following order: Incompatible changes, Documentation, Procedures, Utilities, Drivers, Platforms, Fonts, PDF writer (included under Drivers through fileset 5.88), Interpreter, Streams (included under Interpreter through release 2.9.9), Library. Changes marked with a * were made available as patches to a previous release.

# Version 8.00 (2002-11-21)

This is the 8.00 release of AFPL Ghostscript. The most significant new feature since 7.0x is support for DeviceN colorspaces, up to 8 colorants total at 8 bits per component. Also, pdfwrite has seen considerable improvement in font handling, and many other bug fixes.

The following SourceForge bug numbers were open at the time of this release: 405342, 407342, 414947, 414985, 446344, 458261, 458775, 458780, 459647, 465936, 484752, 484753, 487953, 493348, 505429, 510808, 526099, 526491, 530011, 535366, 535752, 535836, 538033, 539239, 546823, 554076, 558151, 558435, 563287, 569573, 570772, 573744, 578838, 578865, 584990, 592160, 592837, 592841, 592925, 592930, 595760, 596009, 600288, 601255, 601336, 601694, 603934, 605830, 607425, 607850, 610356, 610478, 610727, 611694, 611701, 611727, 611898, 612801, 614298, 615165, 616970, 616976, 617077, 617523, 621246, 623292, 624515, 625085, 626059, 626295, 626358, 626419, 626464, 627545, 628110, 629335, 633299, 634036, 634358, 634514, 636210, 640159, 641278, 641280, 641283, 641296, 641490.

### Incompatible changes

No incompatible changes in this release.

## Documentation

    First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
    (doc/API.htm [1.29], doc/Bug-form.htm [1.33], doc/Bug-info.htm [1.32],
    doc/C-style.htm [1.39], doc/Commprod.htm [1.26], doc/Copying.htm [1.25],
    doc/DLL.htm [1.27], doc/Deprecated.htm [1.6], doc/Develop.htm [1.101],
    doc/Devices.htm [1.58], doc/Drivers.htm [1.37], doc/Fonts.htm [1.35],
    doc/Helpers.htm [1.29], doc/History1.htm [1.25], doc/History2.htm [1.25],
    doc/History3.htm [1.25], doc/History4.htm [1.25], doc/History5.htm [1.27],
    doc/History6.htm [1.42], doc/History7.htm [1.29], doc/Htmstyle.htm [1.30],
    doc/Install.htm [1.39], doc/Issues.htm [1.33], doc/Language.htm [1.58],
    doc/Lib.htm [1.27], doc/Maintain.htm [1.36], doc/Make.htm [1.62],
    doc/New-user.htm [1.44], doc/News.htm [1.121], doc/Projects.htm [1.49],
    doc/Ps-style.htm [1.23], doc/Ps2epsi.htm [1.27], doc/Ps2pdf.htm [1.49],
    doc/Psfiles.htm [1.40], doc/Readme.htm [1.47], doc/Release.htm [1.74],
    doc/Source.htm [1.25], doc/Tester.htm [1.24], doc/Testing.htm [1.14],
    doc/Unix-lpr.htm [1.25], doc/Use.htm [1.71], doc/Xfonts.htm [1.25],
    doc/gs-vms.hlp [1.24], man/dvipdf.1 [1.22], man/font2c.1 [1.22],
    man/gs.1 [1.23], man/gslp.1 [1.22], man/gsnd.1 [1.22], man/pdf2dsc.1 [1.21],
    man/pdf2ps.1 [1.23], man/pdfopt.1 [1.21], man/pf2afm.1 [1.22],
    man/pfbtopfa.1 [1.23], man/printafm.1 [1.22], man/ps2ascii.1 [1.21],
    man/ps2epsi.1 [1.20], man/ps2pdf.1 [1.27], man/ps2pdfwr.1 [1.26],
    man/ps2ps.1 [1.29], man/wftopfa.1 [1.22]: 2002/11/21 07:12:16 raph)

## Procedures

    First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
    (version.mak [1.58]: 2002/11/21 07:12:17 raph)

## Utilities

    Fixes problems:
    	- Don't overwrite source file when ps2pdf.bat is used with 1
    argument and the argument has no ".ps" extension. (Fixed by Moritz Barsnick)
    Bug #631974 (lib/ps2pdfxx.bat [1.13]: 2002/11/20 03:01:23 alexcher)

## Drivers

    Documents the old macos output device as deprecated. This is superceeded by
    the gdevdsp. (gdevmac.c [1.7]: 2002/11/20 18:24:44 giles)

## PDF writer

    Fixes problems:
    	- Fix (pdfwrite) : pdf_put_colored_pattern wrongly accessed pattern
    mask. SourceForge bugs "[ 623989 ] (pdfwrite) wrong colors with 269-01.ps",
    "[ 602995 ] (pdfwrite) 269-01.ps limitcheck". (gdevpdfv.c [1.20]: 2002/11/18
    22:23:40 igor)
    	- Fix (pdfwrite) : Providing additional documentation about embedded
    fonts. (gdevpdtb.c [1.12]: 2002/11/20 10:21:15 igor)
    	- Fix (pdfwrite) : Encoding Differences were not written for
    embedded Type 1,2 fonts that have a very instandard Encoding. Discovered
    with SF bug "[ 641296 ] acrobat generates bad ps from gs pdf".
    (gdevpdtt.c [1.24]: 2002/11/21 00:05:06 igor)
    	- Fix (pdfwrite) : The previous patch about Encoding Differences was
    inaccurate about True Types and CID fonts. Improving it with a better
    condition. (gdevpdtt.c [1.25]: 2002/11/21 03:44:11 igor)

## PDF Interpreter

    Fixes problems:
    	- Pattern stream was copied to the string failing with rangecheck
    for long streams. The patch uses strings when possible and switches to
    reusable streams for longer streams. Bug #634080, customer #561
    (lib/pdf_draw.ps [1.63]: 2002/11/21 01:29:07 alexcher)

## Interpreter

    Fixes problems:
    	- Correction for 637954 dina3_watermark.pdf fails on GS 7.33. This
    forces the color space to /DeviceGray whenever the initgraphics operator is
    called. Previously if color space substitution was active and the last
    colorspace was /DeviceGray then its substituted colorspace would remain
    active. (lib/gs_cspace.ps [1.5]: 2002/11/18 23:42:18 dan)
    	- Packed array is accepted now as an encoded user path in insideness
    testing operators. Bug #640855 (zupath.c [1.7]: 2002/11/20 18:17:28
    alexcher)
    	- Fix : (1) gc_status.requested was not initialized for stable
    memories, but used by alloc_acquire_chunk. (2) setting
    gc_status.vm_threshold and gc_status.enabled for stable memories
    synchronously with non-stable ones. This allows to control stable memories
    with setvmthreshold and vmreclaim. With default settings pdfwrite now works
    faster. SourceForge bug "[ 621243 ] (pdfwrite) slow mahle.pdf"
    (zvmem2.c [1.7]: 2002/11/20 18:56:56 igor)
    	- Bring /SubstituteFont procedure prototype up to the standard:
    <name> SubstituteFont <name> . Do traditional GS font
    substitution after the standard font substitution. Use no-op standard font
    substitution for backward compatibility. Bug #637424 Customer #71
    (lib/gs_fonts.ps [1.24]: 2002/11/21 04:43:58 alexcher)

    When processing multiple EPS files, call showpage if necessary for
    subsequent files. (lib/gs_epsf.ps [1.10]: 2002/11/19 20:14:01 ghostgum)

    Corrects a small typo in the api documentation. (gdevdsp.h [1.7]: 2002/11/20
    17:46:26 giles)

    First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
    (lib/gs_init.ps [1.74]: 2002/11/21 07:12:17 raph)

## Library

    Fixes problems:
    	- Fix : lsb must not apply to True Type subglyphs. The offset to be
    taken from composite only. SourceForge bugs "[ 623122 ] component shift in
    TrueType composites", "[ 536863 ] Type11 layout bugs". (gstype42.c [1.25]:
    2002/11/20 09:55:26 igor)
    	- Fix : (1) gc_status.requested was not initialized for stable
    memories, but used by alloc_acquire_chunk. (2) setting
    gc_status.vm_threshold and gc_status.enabled for stable memories
    synchronously with non-stable ones. This allows to control stable memories
    with setvmthreshold and vmreclaim. With default settings pdfwrite now works
    faster. SourceForge bug "[ 621243 ] (pdfwrite) slow mahle.pdf"
    (gsalloc.c [1.18]: 2002/11/20 18:56:43 igor)
    	- Fix : (1) gc_status.requested was not initialized for stable
    memories, but used by alloc_acquire_chunk. (2) setting
    gc_status.vm_threshold and gc_status.enabled for stable memories
    synchronously with non-stable ones. This allows to control stable memories
    with setvmthreshold and vmreclaim. With default settings pdfwrite now works
    faster. SourceForge bug "[ 621243 ] (pdfwrite) slow mahle.pdf"
    (gsalloc.h [1.6]: 2002/11/20 18:57:10 igor)

    First commit of 8.0 process: update versions and dates, update to News.htm.
    (gscdef.c [1.32]: 2002/11/21 07:12:17 raph)

Copyright © 2002 artofcode LLC. All rights reserved.

This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of the license contained in the file LICENSE in this distribution. For more information about licensing, please refer to http://www.ghostscript.com/licensing/. For information on commercial licensing, go to http://www.artifex.com/licensing/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 101 Lucas Valley Road #110, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861.

Ghostscript version 8.00, 21 November 2002