# The &kghostview; Handbook

Pamela Roberts

    &Pamela.Roberts.mail;

2001 2002 &Pamela.Roberts;
&FDLNotice;
2006-02-28
0.20

&kghostview; displays and prints &PostScript; (`.ps`, `.eps`) and Portable Document Format (`.pdf`) files.

This document describes &kghostview; version 0.20

KDE linux postscript ghostview

## Introduction

&kghostview; displays and prints &PostScript; (`.ps`, `.eps`) and Portable Document Format (`.pdf`) files. It is a port to &kde; of Tim Theisen's Ghostview program which uses Alladin Ghostscript 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 can be 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 titlebar at the top of a window shows you the name of the document in that window.

The main area displays a page of the current document. If the page is too large to fit inside the window, scrollbars are automatically added to the sides of the display, although these can be disabled with the Settings menu.

Note that the Toolbar and the Page List can be hidden with the Settings menu options to give more space on the screen for the content area.

You can scroll up and down in a page with the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys, or use the View Read Up (PageUp) and View Read Down (PageDown) options to scroll through the entire document.

The Read Up and Read Down -Toolbar buttons do what they say, or you can go immediately to any page with a &LMB; click on the appropriate entry in the Page List.

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;&Shift;M or for any page by &LMB; clicking on it in the Page List. You can also clear or change your page marks using the context menu that is activated by &RMB; clicking anywhere in the Page List area or by selecting the Edit menu.

## The Menubar

### The File Menu

&Ctrl; O File Open...

  Open a file. If a file is currently being displayed it will be closed.

File Open Recent

  Open a file selected from a combo box of recently opened files. If a file is currently being displayed it will be closed.

File Save As...

  Save the currently open file.

&Ctrl; P File Print...

  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.

&Ctrl; Q File Quit

  Close down &kghostview;.

### The Edit Menu

You can also get this menu by &RMB; clicking anywhere in the Page List area.

&Ctrl;&Shift; M Edit Mark Current Page

  Toggle the page marked flag for the current page.

Edit Mark All Pages

  Set the page marked flag for all pages of the document.

Edit 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

Edit Mark Odd Pages

  Set the page marked flag for all odd numbered pages in the document.

Edit Toggle Page Marks

  Toggle the page marked flags for all pages in the document.

Edit Remove Page Marks

  Clear the page marked flags for all pages in the document.

### The View Menu

F5 View Reload

  Re-render the current document page.

M View Maximize

  This option maximizes the &kghostview; window.

&Ctrl;&Shift; F View Full Screen Mode

  This option maximizes the &kghostview; window and the currently shown page. Even the window decorations (titlebar &etc;) are temporarily removed. To switch back to normal window mode, press the ESC key or the shortcut &Ctrl;&Shift; F again, or open the context menu with a &RMB; click and select Exit Full Screen Mode.

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.

&Ctrl;+ View Zoom In

  Increase the magnification of the document view.

View Zoom

  Select a predefined zoom factor.

&Ctrl; - View Zoom Out

  Decrease the magnification of the document view.

View Fit to Page Width

  Scale the display so a page width fits exactly across the main display area.

S View Fit to Screen

  Scale the display so the entire page fits exactly across the main display area.

&Ctrl; PageUp View Previous Page

  View the previous page of the document.

&Ctrl; PageDown View Next Page

  View the next page of the document.

&Ctrl; Home View First Page

  Go to the first page of the document.

&Ctrl; End View Last Page

  Go to the last page of the document.

View Go to Page

  Go to a selected page of the document.

PageUp View Read Up

  Scroll backwards through the document.

PageDown View Read Down

  Scroll forwards through the document.

### The Settings Menu

&Ctrl;M Settings Show/Hide Menubar

  Toggles the menubar on/off.

Settings Show/Hide Toolbar

  Toggle the Toolbar display on and off.

Settings Show/Hide Statusbar

  Toggle the Status bar display on and off.

&Ctrl;&Shift; F Settings Full Screen Mode

  This option maximizes the &kghostview; window and the currently shown page. Even the window decorations (titlebar &etc;) are temporarily removed. To switch back to normal window mode, press the ESC key or the shortcut &Ctrl;&Shift; F again, or open the context menu with a &RMB; click and select Exit Full Screen Mode.

Settings Configure Shortcuts...

  Opens a dialog for changing the shortcuts. Using this option you can change the standard key shortcut for &kghostview;'s commands or create new ones.

Settings Configure Toolbars...

  Opens a dialog for configuring the toolbar. You can add and remove toolbuttons for &kghostview;'s commands with this option.

Settings Show/Hide Scrollbars

  Toggle the horizontal and vertical scrollbars on and off.

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 Watch File

  If this is selected the display will automatically update if the document file changes.

Settings No Flicker

  If this is selected the display will start showing objects instantly as they are rendered, otherwise the whole page is rendered off-screen and then displayed.

Settings Configure &kghostview;...

  Brings up the &kghostview; configuration dialog box.

### The Help Menu

&help.menu.documentation;

## Configuration

The configuration dialog box is accessed with the Settings Configure &kghostview;... option. It has two pages; General and Ghostscript Configuration

### General Settings

You can select Enable anti-aliasing of fonts and images to get smoothly rendered text, but note that anti-aliasing is memory intensive and slower than straightforward rendering of fonts. Early versions of Ghostscript could not perform anti-aliasing.

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 separate 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; &Mark.Donohoe.mail; (original author) 1998

- &David.Sweet; &David.Sweet.mail; Maintainer 1999-2000

- &Wilco.Greven; &Wilco.Greven.mail; Current maintainer

- &David.Faure; &David.Faure.mail; (basis for shell)

- Daniel Duley mosfet@kde.org (port to Kparts)

- &Espen.Sand; &Espen.Sand.mail; (dialog boxes)

Documentation copyright 2001, 2002 &Pamela.Roberts; &Pamela.Roberts.mail;

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## 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 &package; package on &kde-ftp;, the main ftp site of the &kde; project.

&install.compile.documentation;
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