Ghostscript Black Box Magic

What is Ghostscript?
For those not fam iliar , Ghostscript (gs ), strictly defined, is a so-called PostScript interpreter , and m any program s use gs for PostScript conversions and im port/ export. Ghostscript has becom e one of the core building blocks of OSS software. It would be hard to im agine m odern OSS distributions and software without it. Likewise, Scribus uses Ghostscript, som etim es taking advantage of the m ost sophisticated features that are available only in the latest versions. Scribus uses gs for three purposes, the first one being the im port of rasterized EPS files and certain DCS files into im age fram es. The second feature that requires gs is the Print Preview, and the third one is the Barcode Generator . If gs is not installed on your system or Scribus cant find the gs executable, the features m entioned before wont work, and Scribus will display a warning each tim e it is being launched:

In case gs has been installed on your com puter , but Scribus cant find it, you can add the path to the gs exceutable file in the Scribus Preferences. We always encourage you to have the latest Ghostscript available for your system .

Installing Ghostscript
Linux/UNIX As m entioned above, Ghostscript is required by m any applications, including the printing subsystem . Thus, its unlikely that it isnt installed on your system . If, for any reason, gs isnt available on your system or your system is being shipped with a version thats too old (you should at least use Ghostscript 8.6 with Scribus), you can download a tarball from the gs website. Be careful to download Ghostscript itself, not ghostpdl, whose source code is in the sam e directory. Then follow the build instructions in the tarball and install it. Windows See the general inform ation about Scribus on Windows for further details. Mac OS X There are different ways to install Ghostscript for Mac OS X, but unfortunately, none of them seem s to be as easy as m ost Mac users are used to: Y ou can download a ZIP archive with four DMGs of gs for various OS X versions. Please read the related info file to decide which version you need. Y ou can install gs via Fink. The m ost current releases of Ghostscript are always available via MacPorts. Finally, you can, of course, download the latest source code and com pile Ghostscript yourself. OS/2 and eComStation See the general inform ation about Scribus on OS/ 2 and eCom Station for further details.