Reporting Ghostscript problems

The Ghostscript development team wants Ghostscript to be of high quality, but we have limited resources for responding to problems, so please read this document carefully. Read each section in order, and follow the instructions in the first one that applies to your situation. We appreciate problem reports, since they help us improve the quality of Ghostscript, but please help us by following the procedure below.

While we do try to respond to all reports, we give priority to the following classes of users:

Beta testers who have actually given us at least one report on some beta version supplied to them.
People developing drivers for Ghostscript or applications based on it, and that will be made freely available.
People who express serious interest in licensing Ghostscript commercially.
Other people who have signed up as testers of developer releases.

We currently have access to systems running Linux, Solaris, Microsoft Windows (various versions), and MacOS; gcc, Borland C++ Builder, Watcom C++, Microsoft Visual C++, and Metrowerks CodeWarrior. If your problem turns out to be specific to some other hardware or software configuration, it may take longer to track down, since we will have to rely on other users to help.

Check that you have a good copy of the most recent version.

Go to

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1897

and see if the version number of your Ghostscript installation is the highest number listed there in the applicable File Module. The ghostscript module lists stable releases; the gs-beta module lists beta versions. You can find the version number of your installation by executing

gs --version

(or gswin32c, or whatever your Ghostscript executable is named).

If you aren't running the most recent version, please get the most recent version and install it, per the instructions in Install.htm. Check whether the problem is still there. If it is, go on to the next step.

Even if you are running the most recent version, it is possible that you may be running a modified copy. We are confident that copies on the SourceForge site just mentioned, our other master distribution site on mirror.cs.wisc.edu, and CD-ROMs of commercial Linux distributions are good; if you got Ghostscript somewhere else, please update it from one of these places, and check whether the problem is still there before proceeding.

Check whether your problem is already known.

Go to

http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=1897

and see whether your problem is already known. If it is, you may want to add a follow-up comment to the report. If it isn't, go on to the next step.

Have you ever run Ghostscript successfully?

If your problem is connected with installing or configuring Ghostscript, and you haven't yet been able to run it successfully, we're sorry, but we can't provide help. You might want to re-read the instructions for installing Ghostscript, mentioned above. If that doesn't help, all we can suggest is that you post your problem to the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.postscript. If, after you find the solution, you have suggestions for improving the documentation, please let us know.

Reproduce the problem with Ghostscript alone.

If you are running Ghostscript through some other piece of software, such as a GUI-based viewer, you will have to reproduce the problem with Ghostscript alone before we can look at it.

If you are running Ghostscript through Ghostview (for Unix and Linux), try to run the same file through Ghostscript (gs) without using Ghostview. If you don't know how to do this, or the problem doesn't show up, please contact ghostview@cs.wisc.edu.
If you are running Ghostscript through GSview (for MS Windows and OS/2), try to run the same file through Ghostscript (gswin32 or gswin32c) without using GSview. To find out more details about how GSview is calling Ghostscript, start GSview with debugging enabled (e.g. gsview /d): these details can be seen using "File | Show Messages" and can be copied to the clipboard for pasting into a text document. If you have trouble doing this, or if you can't reproduce the original problem with Ghostscript alone, please contact gsview@ghostgum.com.au.
If you are running Ghostscript through any other software (e.g., dvips, a printer spooler, etc.), we are sorry, but we cannot help you unless you can tell us how to produce the problem using Ghostscript alone.

Check whether you are using a third-party printer driver.

The file src/devs.mak lists all the drivers about which we can answer questions; the file src/contrib.mak lists all the other drivers. If you are using a driver listed in the latter file, please try to reproduce the problem using a driver listed in the former. If you can't, please contact the author of the problem driver.

Send us a problem report.

Please go to the problem reporting form in Bug-form.htm and follow its instructions.

This file is part of AFPL Ghostscript. See the Aladdin Free Public License (the "License") for full details of the terms of using, copying, modifying, and redistributing AFPL Ghostscript.

Ghostscript version 7.03, 20 October 2001