[Scribus] a couple of "problems" in cvs

[tech at atlantictechsolutions.com]

At Fri, 13 Jun 2003 08:13:38 +0530 , Subash Jeyan <nsjeyan at vsnl.net> wrote: 

>hi,
>
>On Fri, 13 Jun 2003 07:35:28 +0530
>Subash Jeyan <nsjeyan at vsnl.net> wrote:
>
>> but, mdk does have the binary named as gs located in /usr/bin. when i
>> run scribus from the console and use the print preview, i get the
>> following error message in the console:
>> 
>> Unknown device: png16m
>> 
>> i do have both libpng and libpng-devel (1.2.5) installed.
>
>just an update. i removed the mdk libpng and libpng-devel rpms and
>compiled/installed libpng-1.2.5 from source and i still get the
>error "Unknown device: png16m" when i use print preview.
>
>regards, subash.
>

png16m is a ghostscript "device" Your error messages are indicative that mandrake does not include this device driver in the way they package ghostscript. IMO a bug which should be filed against ghostscript with Mandrake. 

These should be the included "devices" with Ghostscript:

jpeg (jpg): jpeg, jpeggray
windows bitmaps (bmp): bmpmono, bmp16, bmp256, bmp16m
portable network graphics (png): pngmono, pnggray, png16, png256, png16m
tagged image file format (tif): tiffcrle, tiffg3, tiffg32d, tiffg4, tifflzw, tiffpack, tiff12nc, tiff24nc
PC Paintbrush (pcx): pcxmono, pcxgray, pcx16, pcx256, pcx24b

png16m is allows ghostscript to take a postscript file and output 32 bit color PNG's.

PNG's are a really good format - better compression than gif and full 32bit color. Works great for screen shots.

You can find out which "devices" are installed with ghostscript:

$gs -h

will output all the devices. 

$gs -h | grep png16m 

will show if it is installed.

You have to be careful how you install lib png - it depends on how Qt and Ghostscript is packaged. If you try to update libpng without recompiling Qt and KDE, there possbily can be serious problems - I'tried it once on RH 7.3 and it broke Qt and completely. 

See if there is an updated ghostscript - if not, file a bug with Mandrake.

Hope that helps,

Peter