Re: Ghostscript in the way of e-mail downloads.

[Bob Proulx]

Peter Burchard wrote:
> Hello, helpful people!

I will give it a shot but I don't know how helpful I will be for your
ghostscript question. :-)

> For more than a year, I've been unable to download PDF's because this
> started coming up on my screen when I tried:
> 
> Ghostscript is not found on your system, please download it at
> http://www.ghostscript.com
>
> So I've gone to ghostscript and tried to download Ghostscript 9.15 for
> Windows (64 bit)

I take it by this that you are running MS-Windows?  You might only
here crickets chirping in response here because most of us don't run
Microsoft.  Most of us here on the help gnu list are running GNU and
therefore don't know much about Microsoft.  Therefore you might have
better luck asking about MS-Windows in a MS centric place such as on
the Cygwin mailing lists or the Mingw mailing lists.  At least they
are running MS and might know something.

In any case when I download PDFs the program I like the best to view
them is 'xpdf'.  However xpdf has had a trouble history of support.
Other people like 'evince'.  I have noticed recently that chromium now
supports PDF viewing natively in the browser.  There are choices and
so far none are perfect.

> After trying to allow the unknown program to make changes to my computer, I
> get:
> 
> Installer integrity check has failed. Common causes include incomplete
> download and damaged media. Contact the installer's author to obtain a new
> copy.

Since you are using http://www.ghostscript.com/ then is there a reason
you are asking here about problems with it instead of on the mailing
lists for the www.ghostscript.com project?

  http://ghostscript.com/mailman/listinfo/

According to the http://www.ghostscript.com/ page and links from there
the http://ghostscript.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gs-devel mailing
list is the right place to write for discussion about the software
there.

> Then I notice at the top of the Ghostscript downloads page:
> 
> For personal use, use without redistribution, and use with no technical
> support the GNU Affero Public License (AGPL)
> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html> download is your choice.
> 
> There, I see a lot of reading to do, but nowhere to click to download
> anything.
>
> How do I make that Ghostscript message go away, so my computer will allow me
> to read PDF's? For a long time I've been going to my wife's login to see it,
> because I can look at and download PDF's there. But if I try to copy the
> file to a flash drive and put it into my login and open it, I can't. Same
> problem.

I know nothing about the www.ghostscript.com project.  Please write to
the gs-devel@ghostscript.com mailing list and ask there.

I do see the GNU project ghostscript at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/

I am unfamiliar with either and have no idea the history behind those
two projects.  I don't know if they are the same, different, forked or
joined.  Maybe someone else will know something.

I assume it is a project fork of some sort.  I realize it is confusing
to people but with free(dom) software everyone is free to fork a
project.  Generally that means that if there are problems with one of
the forks the right place to go for help is to that fork.  Otherwise
it is like taking a Chevy to a Ford dealer or the reverse.

Bob