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.
This is the second release in the stable 8.7x series. It features improved handling of fonts, nesting and color fixes with transparency objects, reduced memory footprint for the halftone cache, as well as improvements to the pxl output devices, and the usual number of bug and robustness fixes.
New in this release is an experimental project file for Microsoft Visual Studio. This wraps the normal nmake build, and makes it easier for developers to get started building Ghostscript with that compiler.
Support for tiff file output is now provided using the libtiff implementation rather than our more limited native code as in previous releases. There is also a new 'tiffsep1' output device which produces halftoned separations at 1 bit-per-pixel, in contrast to the 'tiffsep' device which produces 8 bit-per-pixel plates.
Support for using FreeType as a type rasterizer has been greatly improved. We do not recommend its use as of this release, but it is much more functional than previously and our intent is that it will become the default in a future release.
The graphics library has been updated to provide more accurate scan conversion of vector art including fixes to dash behavior, transparent stroked paths, thick stroked paths, radial shadings, xps cap handling, "pie" joins, degenerate beziers, improved handling of dropouts in thin strokes and better thin axis-aligned strokes.
For a list of open issues, or to report problems with this release, please visit bugs.ghostscript.com.
No recorded incompatible changes.
See the history file for complete log of changes.
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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 that license. Refer to licensing information at http://www.artifex.com/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 7 Mt. Lassen Drive - Suite A-134, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861, for further information.
Ghostscript version 8.71, 10 February 2010