From: sitongia@hao.ucar.edu (Leonard Sitongia)
Subject: SUMMARY: Looking for PostScript previewer rendering 8-bits under X
Keywords: postscript pageview ghostview
Reply-To: sitongia@hao.ucar.edu (Leonard Sitongia)
Organization: High Altitude Observatory/NCAR, Boulder CO
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 19:44:39 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.172121.14768@ncar.ucar.edu>, sitongia@hao.ucar.edu (Leonard Sitongia) writes:
> (The platform context is Sun workstation running SunOS 4.1.1 and
> OpenWindows, but we have access to Motif, standard MIT X11R4/R5 and SGI's.)
> 
> A user here would like to find a previewer which supports the following
> features.
> 
> >     The PS previewer should handle (ideally):
> >       1. 8-bit grayscale
> >       2. 8-bit color
> >       3. landscape and protrait modes
> >
> 
> -- 
> --Leonard E. Sitongia           HAO System Manager                 
> sitongia@ncar.ucar.edu          voice: (303)497-1509   fax: (303)497-1589
> High Altitude Observatory       P.O. Box 3000 Boulder CO  80307

I received several suggestions about this:

>From: cristy@eplrx7.es.duPont.com (Cristy)
>Use `display' from contrib/ImageMagick.tar.Z:
>
>  display images.ps
>-- 
>cristy@dupont.com

>From: lee@sq.com (Liam Quin)
>Does the document have more than one page?
>
>If not, I _might_ have time to turn out something, or contact Tim Panton --
>thp@westhawk.co.uk, who has an OLIT widget that dislays PostScript.  I do
>not believe he charges, but might be wrong.
>
>Lee

> From: Brent.Browning@Eng.Sun.COM (Brent Browning)
>    It's not 4 bits, that would only be 16 colors.  By default pageview uses a
> color cube with 140 colors.  You can get it to use a larger color cube of 240
> colors though.  The key here is that pageview just asks the server for a
> StaticColor visual.  The default is to provide one that only uses 140 colors so
> it won't clash with other X applications.  If you want more, at startup type
> "openwin -cubesize large".  From xnews(1):
> 
>      [ -cubesize small | large ]
>           This determines the size of the color cube contained in
>           the StaticColor colormap, which is the default colormap
>           used by NeWS programs.  small is the default cube  size
>           value  since it leaves the most room for X11 clients to
>           allocate colors without conflicting with  NeWS  colors.
>           large  will generate better looking NeWS rendering, but
>           will increase the chance of conflicts between  X11  and
>           NeWS colors.
>  
>           small provides a color cube with 5 colors along the red
>           axis,  5  along  the  green  axis, and 5 along the blue
>           axis.  It also provides 15 additional  shades  of  gray
>           above and beyond the grays contained in the color cube.
>           This can be described by the  syntax:  5x5x5+15.   This
>           gives  a  total of 140 colors). The large cube size, on
>           the other hand, provides  a  color  cube  of  the  form
>           5x9x5+15.  It has a total size of 240 colors.
> 
>    If what you really want is 256 shades of gray you can start up
> pageview like this:
> 
> 	% pageview -visual StaticGray filename.ps
> 
> Brent Browning			Internet: brentb@Eng.Sun.COM

The solution was ImageMagick. The newest version supports rendering
PostScript on the screen using GhostScript.

Thanks to all of you for your time.

-- 
--Leonard E. Sitongia           HAO System Manager                 
sitongia@ncar.ucar.edu          voice: (303)497-1509   fax: (303)497-1589
High Altitude Observatory       P.O. Box 3000 Boulder CO  80307