Changes in the most recent release of Ghostscript

This document is news about the most recent Ghostscript release. For earlier versions, see the history documents:

History of Ghostscript versions 8.n
History of Ghostscript versions 7.n
History of Ghostscript versions 6.n
History of Ghostscript versions 5.n
History of Ghostscript versions 4.n
History of Ghostscript versions 3.n
History of Ghostscript versions 2.n
History of Ghostscript versions 1.n

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview.


Version 8.11 (2003-08-16)

Ghostscript 8.11 is the first stable release since 8.00, building on the features in the 8.10 beta, and with numerous additional fixes and improvements. In particular, font rendering is greatly improved (thanks to Igor Melichev's new hinting code), PDF 1.4 transparency rendering is much more likely to be correct, and there is better support for CID font substitution. Processing of incorrect and broken PDF files is also improved, including files corrupted xref tables and non-ASCII font names. Many other smaller fixes are included.

Users may want to experiment with the new -dAlignToPixels=0 setting, which enables subpixel positioning for antialiased font rendering.

The following bugs.ghostscript.com numbers were open at the time of this release:

405501, 406273, 414947, 430175, 446344, 456692, 458261, 458775, 458780, 459647, 463688, 465936, 487460, 487953, 493348, 509829, 526099, 526491, 530011, 535366, 535932, 542629, 553187, 555072, 558151, 558435, 563287, 572865, 578865, 592160, 592837, 595760, 600288, 601336, 602263, 603934, 604722, 605830, 607425, 607850, 610478, 611898, 614298, 617077, 617523, 624515, 626295, 628110, 629335, 634036, 634358, 636210, 645316, 651644, 656414, 656510, 664484, 667301, 669654, 674241, 674417, 674418, 677324, 677383, 677430, 680301, 681469, 684778, 684866, 685335, 686746, 686747, 686750, 686752, 686765, 686770, 686778, 686779, 686782, 686788, 686789, 686796, 686803, 686813, 686815, 686816, 686817, 686819, 686822, 686824, 686833, 686834, 686837, 686839, 686841, 686842, 686843, 686844, 686845, 686850, 686852, 686853, 686860, 686863, 686865, 686867, 686873, 686877, 686883, 686885, 686889, 686892, 686896, 686897, 686902, 686903, 686904, 686908, 686909, 686919, 686930, 686931, 686933, 686936, 686937, 686938, 686943, 686944, 686946, 686947, 686948, 686949, 686950, 686951, 686952, 686953, 686954, 686956, 686957, 686958, 686959, 686961, 686963, 686966, 686975, 686978, 686980, 686981, 686990, 686996, 686998, 686999, 687000.

Incompatible changes

The mechanism for locating resources has changed since 8.00. See the usage documentation for details of the new mechanism.

Ghostscript now runs in save level 1 by default, which has changed since 8.10. Jobservers will need to use the -dNOOUTERSAVE option to restore the old behavior.


Copyright © 2003 artofcode LLC. All rights reserved.

This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of the license contained in the file LICENSE in this distribution. For more information about licensing, please refer to http://www.ghostscript.com/licensing/. For information on commercial licensing, go to http://www.artifex.com/licensing/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 101 Lucas Valley Road #110, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861.

Ghostscript version 8.11, 16 August 2003