Pamela Roberts
Copyright © 2001, 2002 Pamela Roberts
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Kghostview displays and prints PostScript® (.ps, .eps) and Portable Document Format (.pdf) files.
This document describer Kghostview version 0.13pre2.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Kghostview displays and prints PostScript® (.ps, .eps) and Portable Document Format (.pdf) files. It is a front end to Tim Theisen's Ghostview program which is used to view documents prepared in Adobe™'s PostScript® page description language. PostScript® is the major page description language for printing on UNIX® systems and this application is used to preview material intended for printing or for reading documents online.
You can use Kghostview with all recent versions of Ghostscript. Newer versions offer much improved performance which you can take advantage of with Kghostview.
If a document does not conform to the Adobe® document structuring convention the functionality of the viewer is limited. For example, if there is no table of contents, skipping around the document and marking pages is not possible.
Fundamentals
This section describes what you see in the main Kghostview window, the actions of the Toolbar buttons and how to use the Page List.
You can open multiple instances of Kghostview to view multiple documents. The title bar at the top of a window shows you the name of the document in that window.
Note that the Toolbar and the text fields that help you to navigate through a document can be hidden with the Settings menu options to give more space on the screen for the content area.
The main area displays a page of the current document. If the page is too large to fit inside the window, scroll bars are automatically added to the sides of the display, although these can be disabled with the Settings menu.
You can also scroll up and down in a page with the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys.
The Next Page and Previous Page Toolbar buttons do what they say, or you can go immediately to any page with a left mouse button click on the Page List.
If the page is too tall be displayed completely in the window the Read up Document and Read down Document buttons can be used to scroll up or down through the entire document.
If selected in the Settings menu a Page List will be displayed at the left side of the window. This list has two columns: the first may contain a flag indicating that the page has been marked, the second contains the page numbers. You can use this page list to navigate through the document or to mark pages for printing.
You can toggle the ‘page marked’ flag for the currently displayed page with Ctrl+M or for any page by middle mouse button clicking on it in the Page List. You can also clear or change your page marks using the drop-down menu that is activated by right mouse button clicking anywhere in the Page List area or by selecting the PageMarks menu.
The Menubar
- File->Open... (Ctrl+O)
Open a file. If a file is currently being displayed it will be closed.
- File->Open Recent
Open a file selected from a drop-down list of recently opened files. If a file is currently being displayed it will be closed.
- File->Save As...
Save the currently open file.
- File->Print... (Ctrl+P)
Print the currently displayed document. The Print dialog box will let you choose to print all or selected (marked) pages.
- File->Document Info...
Display some basic information about the document.
- File->Quit (Ctrl+Q)
Close down Kghostview.
The View Menu
- View->Redisplay
Re-render the current document page.
- View->Fit To Page Width
Scale the display so a page width fits exactly across the main display area.
- View->Orientation
Change the orientation of the displayed page. You can choose between Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Upside Down and Seascape which is like Landscape but the other way up.
- View->Paper Size
Lets you view the document as if it were printed on different paper sizes without changing the scale. You should normally choose Auto.
- View->Zoom In (Ctrl+Shift++)
Increase the magnification of the document view.
- View->Zoom Out (Ctrl+-)
Decrease the magnification of the document view.
- View->Previous Page (Page Up)
View the previous page of the document.
- View->Next Page (Page Down)
View the next page of the document.
- View->Go to start (Ctrl+Home)
Go to the start of the document.
- View->Go to end (Ctrl+End)
Go to the end of the document.
- View->Read up document (Shift+Space)
Scroll backwards through the document.
- View->Go to Page...
Choose the document page to display.
The PageMarks Menu
Note
You can also get this menu by right mouse button clicking anywhere in the Page List area.
- PageMarks->Mark Current Page (Ctrl+M)
Toggle the page marked flag for the current page.
- PageMarks->Mark All Pages
Set the page marked flag for all pages of the document.
- PageMarks->Mark Even Pages
Set the page marked flag for all even numbered pages in the document. Used in conjunction with Mark Odd Pages or Toggle Page Marks this provides a convenient way of double-sided printing a document on a single sided printer
- PageMarks->Mark Odd Pages
Set the page marked flag for all odd numbered pages in the document.
- PageMarks->Toggle Page Marks
Toggle the page marked flags for all pages in the document.
- PageMarks->Remove Page Marks
Clear the page marked flags for all pages in the document.
The Settings Menu
- Settings->Show Toolbar
Toggle the Toolbar display on and off.
- Settings->Show Statusbar
Toggle the Statusbar display on and off.
- Settings->Show Scrollbars
Toggle the horizontal and vertical scrollbars on and off.
- Settings->Watch File
If this is selected the display will automatically update if the document file changes.
- Settings->Show Page List
Toggle the Page List on and off.
- Settings->Show Page Labels
If this is selected the name (if any) of the current page is displayed in the Status Bar.
- Settings->Configure Kghostview...
Brings up the Kghostview configuration dialog box.
The Help Menu
- Help->Contents... (F1)
Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the Kghostview help pages. (this document).
- Help->What's This? (Shift+F1)
Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within Kghostview will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.
- Help->Report Bug...
Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a ‘wishlist’ feature.
- Help->About Kghostview
This will display version and author information.
- Help->About KDE
This displays the KDE version and other basic information.
Configuration
The configuration dialog box is accessed with the Settings->Configure Kghostview... option. It has two pages; General settings and Ghostscript configuration
You can select Enable anti-aliasing of fonts and images to get smoothly rendered text, but note that antialiasing is memory intensive and slower than straightforward rendering of fonts. Early versions of Ghostscript could not perform antialiasing.
Select Use Platform fonts if you wish to use your native system fonts rather than those that come with Ghostscript.
Turn Show Ghostscript Messages in a seperate box on if you want to be informed of any output or error messages generated by the Ghostscript interpreter.
You can choose whether Kghostview uses a Monochrome, Grayscale or Color Palette for the display.
Ghostscript configuration
In this dialog box page you can set the name of the Ghostscript Interpreter executable and the Non-antialiasing arguments: and the Antialiasing arguments passed to it. The default settings should be suitable for most systems.
Credits and License
Kghostview
Program Copyright:
Mark Donohoe (original author) 1998
David Sweet <dsweet@kde.org> Maintainer 1999-2000
Wilco Greven <greven@kde.org> Current maintainer
David Faure <faure@kde.org> (basis for shell)
Daniel Duley <mosfet@kde.org> (port to Kparts)
Espen Sand <epsen@kde.org>(dialog boxes)
Documentation copyright 2001, 2002 Pamela Roberts <pam.roberts@btinternet.com>
This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Installation
Kghostview is part of the KDE 3 project, details of which can be found at http://www.kde.org.
To use Kghostview, you must have the Ghostscript program as well as KDE 3 installed on your machine. The Ghostscript home page is at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
Most distributions will include Kghostview, but if you want to roll your own the source code can be found in the kdegraphics package on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main ftp site of the KDE project.
To see if a later version of Kghostview has been released, you can take a look in http://apps.kde.com.
In order to compile and install Kghostview on your system, type the following in the base directory of the Kghostview distribution:
% ./configure % make % make install
Since Kghostview uses autoconf and automake you should have no trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the KDE mailing lists.