Alternatives to gsview/ghostscript for Windows

Question

Are there more user-friendly alternatives to gsview/ghostcript for Windows?

Solution 1

You might try xpdf (free) or RoPS (non-free)

Solution 2

Evince for Windows doesn't nag on start-up, unlike GSview. (As you probably know, GSview requires registration[*], which costs money, to get rid of the nag. GSview is still licensed under AFPL, a license that was abandoned for ghostscript itself.)

Download link: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Downloads

Currently you need to manually associate ps files with Evince using the Windows right-click -> Open With -> Choose default program.

I think the Windows package doesn't require a separate ghostscript but I need ghostscript for other stuff, so I have it installed anyway. According to https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/SupportedDocumentFormats it uses libspectre, which in turn requires libgs from ghostscript, but the Windows package of Evince comes with its own libgs-8.dll, which might not be the latest version (9 of ghostscript) but works fine as far as I could tell for everything I tried, which is mostly old papers in PS format that I need to read now and then. (Converting these to pdf usually results in crappier documents because of font issues etc.)

Evince is pretty standard on Linux, so its code base is quite good. I've contributed some bug fixes myself in the past, but haven't had to do that in years.

[*] Since sources for GSView are available under AFPL, you could, at least in theory, modify and recompile GSView so it doesn't nag you by changing gvcreg.cpp as the comment at the top of that file suggests; the AFPL license seems to allow you to do so, although it requires you to provide notice to users that the program has been modified. The main issue is that GSView doesn't seem to compile with MS Visual C++ after version 9 (2008 that is) without other source changes.

I assume the nag and dependence on ghostscript as an external program are the main issues you were thinking about in terms of user-friendliness. If there's something else you had in mind, please leave a comment with specifics.

Solution 3

You can use IrfanView to view the PS documents.

Comments

[ripper234]

Is xpdf really more friendly than gsview? As far as I could tell, it's a bunch of command line utilities.

[DaveParillo]

You're right. Most pdf's you can open in xpdf just by specifying the file name. gs almost always requires cmd line parameters that are hard to remember. If you don't like the cmd line, go with Elazar's suggestion & use IrfanView.

[Iiridayn]

Doesn't appear to handle multiple page PS files well, such as those supplied by Donald Knuth.