ghost@aladdin.com (L. Peter Deutsch) (01/16/90)
If you start up Ghostscript with -DNODISPLAY in the command line, it
won't open the X11 device or attempt to install it as the output
device. Unfortunately, no Ghostscript version released to date
allows you to render into a bitmap in memory and then dump the bitmap
to a file. However, in version 1.4 (aren't you tired of hearing
this?), it is possible to do exactly this: you install an "image
device" as the output device, and then write out the bitmap using a
new operator provided for this purpose. 1.4 currently only includes
code for writing PPM format, but it's fairly easy to implement other
formats, by adding either C code or Ghostscript code. (Of course the
former runs a lot faster.)
L. Peter Deutsch ghost@aladdin.com
Aladdin Enterprises ...{uunet!}parcplace!aladdin!ghost
P. O. box 60264, Palo Alto, CA 94306