PDF, PostScript Viewer for Slackware 11

I am writing in LaTeX a lot these days, and I decided that my old laptop¹ needed a versatile document viewer: something to read .pdf, .ps, perhaps .dvi files. Xpdf lacked certain fonts, and Evince seemed the obvious choice, but there were too many dependencies².

Ghostscript compiled without too much trouble, but I wanted to spoil myself with a graphical user interface. Problems began—I was not able to get the GV program to compile, and GSView compiled but could open no files.

Here is what to do, and why:

1. Tweak a Ghostscript sourcefile if you use gcc 3.4.6 on i686-pc-linux-gnu. I had never played in C before . . . scary. Due to

http://www.tutorials-blog.com/postscript/report-does/

Edited ghostscript-8.54/src/gdevpdfe.c line 27 to read

typedef unsigned long long uint64_t;

2. Compile GhostScript with shared object files.

tar -xzvf ghostscript-8.54.tar.gz

cd ghostscript-8.54

GSView requires libgs.so, but the default compile for Ghostscript does not create them. So, in accordance with

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Make.htm

Do the following in ghostscript-8.54 directory:

ln -s src/unix-gcc.mak makefile

make so

make soinstall

(I always run make and subsequent commands as root. It's amateur night in Linuxia.)

2. Install the Ghostscript fonts.

tar -xzvf ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz

cd fonts

su

mkdir /usr/local/share/ghostscript/8.54/Resource/Font

cp * /usr/local/share/ghostscript/8.54/Resource/Font

4. Install GSView.

tar -xzvf gsview-4.8.tar.gz

cd gsview-4.8

cp srcunx/unx.mak Makefile

su

make

make install

Before running make, I edited line 52 of Makefile to read

XINCLUDE=-I/usr/local/lib

But I am pretty sure that this made no difference.

5. Run GSView on a test file. In my case, I got two types of errors:

• GSView needed the (installed) libgs.so file, but could not find it

• GSView also could not find the fonts

Close the error windows with “Ok,” and click to Options-->Advanced Configure

Update Ghostscript Version

854

Give the correct location of Ghostscript Shared Object

/usr/local/lib/libgs.so

Ghostscript Program as gs is fine

Add the fonts to the Ghostscript Include Path (see Step 3, above)

/usr/local/share/ghostscript/8.54/Resource/Font

After closing the Advanced Configure dialog, you should be able to open your test file again.

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1A $100 laptop, it turns out. More on this point to come.

2Since I run xfce.