Ghostscript Hosting: Compare Hosting

What is Ghostscript Hosting?

Looking for a PostScript interpreter? Ghostscript is a free and popular alternative to Adobe PostScript.

About Ghostscript

To give some context to the reason behind Ghostscript, first a little history lesson is needed. For as long as there have been digital printers, there has been PostScript files, which encapsulate all data needd to print a document in a format which is best suited to a printer’s hardware and native resolution.

Starting as far back as 1978 with Xerox, pre-print ready files have existed. In the early 80’s, as Adobe Systems was founded, the PostScript language was created – defining printer files for the next 30 years. Even Steve Jobs, while visiting Adobe, urged them to continue with developing PostScript for laser printer use.

Time flies, and by 1997, Postscript 3 was released, becoming the standard still used today. With a heavy emphasis on font handling and rastered font glyph images as a means to transport documents without font support – the standard is the driving force behind the more commonly known PDF file.

Enter Ghostscript – in 1998, back when PDF and PostScript (.PS ) files were much more tightly controlled by Adobe – Ghostscript was created as a way to view PostScript files without needing to invoke proprietary software from Adobe. PostScript has become a championed near universal standard for printing, but with very few free or open source tools to view or edit PostScript files.

What does GhostScript Do?

GhostScript and GPL Ghostscript as software, performs three major functions.

• It interprets PostScript programming language and portable document format (PDF) for viewing and control.
• It can convert PostScript language files to raster formats and PDF, display, and print them.
• It can also convert PDF to PostScript, and special raster formats, display, and print.

Essentially, Ghostscript allows for display, manipulation and printing of PostScript files without using the Adobe tool-chain. Historically, this has been useful for supporting the .PS convention for linux operating systems, which received little to no attention from Adobe.

For more modern context, with the proliferation of linux powered web-applications, Ghostscript has been ported to hundreds of different programming languages and built into a variety of web-based print file display web applications. Using a browser to change, view, save, or print a file means that OS compatibility is handled by the browser and the bulk of the computation happens on the server side.

How to Install & Use GhostScript

Ghostscript is available in a limited commercial version from Artifex Software Inc. A  free-to-use version, called GPL Ghostscript is available under the GNU Public License (GPL). The three libraries that make up the source code are individually licensed. The source code itself is available in a proprietary git host, and the GNU version has been co-opted into the umbrella of the GNU project. Thousands of projects using GhostScript for varying purposes do exist and can be found on Github, but be sure to pay close attention to the details of each license.

The Ghostscript library offers primitive operations in both PostScript and PDF. They allow graphics and data compression, decompression, and conversion capabilities. Written in C, Ghostscript can function on many systems. You may find graphic user interfaces via third parties for Ghostscript. These allow you to view files, flip forward and backward, scroll, and zoom text in PostScript and PDF files.

Since Ghostscript is a library of specialized code and is not explicitely a web project, hosting plans are not sold as Ghostscript-optimized plans. Ghostscript can be downloaded pre-compiled or from source – and runs on both Windows & Linux, for either 32-bit or 64-bit.

The download itself comes in the two different license versions – the GNU Affero General Public License – and the the Artifex Commerical License. Be sure to understand how you will use Ghostscript prior to downloading each license type.

If you haven’t yet purchased a hosting plan, contact potential providers with your questions about Ghostscript before ordering. If you already have hosting, remember to check with your hosting provider before installing any software to avoid any compatibility problems.

It is likely that most providers will have some level of support, but a virtual private server (VPS) with root level access for executing software – will ultimately be the most simple way to use Ghostscript without permission errors.