gswlx plugin for Total Commander

Switch to Russian

Version 0.2-beta6 for 32-bit Total Commander. Use it at your own responsibility. Tested with Total Commander 7.01 and Ghostscript versions 7.06, 8.00 and 8.53 (requires 7.04 and above) under w2k rus (requires WinNT 3.5 or Win95 or later).

This software is donationware. Free for non-commercial using. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY and NO SUPPORT. Comments and money may be sent to author.

About plugin
Files in archive
How to install plugin
About Ghostscript
Plugin settings
Using plugin
Bitmap saving
Translation
Known issues
New versions
Author
History

About plugin

gswlx is intended to view in Lister and quick view panel of Total Commander files that can be processed by Ghostscript, an interpreter for the PostScript page description language:

PostScript printer files (extension PS or PRN),
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS),
Portable Document Format (PDF),
Adobe Illustarator documents (AI). Not all.

Also it can generate and show sample for Type 1 PostScript fonts (extension PFB).

For all file types plugin can generate thumbnails.

Files in archive

File_Id.diz		short description of package
pluginst.inf		INF file for automatically install plugin in TC 6.50 and above
gswlx.wlx		plugin module
gswlx.htm		description on English (you are reading now)
gswlx_ru.htm		description on Russian
gswlx_ru.lng		sample translation to Russian
gswlx_chs.lng		translation to Simplified Chinese
gswlx_ger.lng		translation to German

How to install plugin

If Ghostscript is not installed, you need to install it.
Unpack files from archive together into some directory.
If you want to store plugin settings together with plugin itself create file gswlx.ini in same place, edit it with text editor to create section [gswlx] and create parameter ini_in_plugdir=1. For example:
[gswlx] ini_in_plugdir=1
In Total Commander menu choose Configuration/Options...
In dialog box Configuration choose Plugins and in group Lister plugins (.WLX) click button Configure.
In dialog box Lister plugins click Add.
Find unpacked gswlx.wlx and press Open.
In dialog box Lister plugins check the order of plugins loading and close it by pressing button OK.
Press OK to close Configuration dialog box.
Use dialog gswlx settings to set options (defaults given in parenthesis):
- Set Ghostscript DLL field to where resides gsdll32.dll. Button >> opens a dialog to browse for the desired file. If full path will be specified in this field and directory ends with \bin, all before \bin will be ended with \lib and used with directories from Directories with Ghostscript library files.
- Fill field Directories with Ghostscript library files with names of directories where resides Ghostscript library files (such as gs_init.ps) and font files separated by semicolon.
- About Additional Ghostscript options see file Use.htm from Ghostscript documentation.
- All three fields can contain environment variables such as %COMMANDER_PATH%.

About Ghostscript

For bitmap creation plugin uses Ghostscript that can be loaded at:

At the same place you can download GSview, a graphical interface for Ghostscript under MS-Windows, OS/2 and GNU/Linux.

AFPL Ghostscript for Win32 is available as a self extracting archive which installs itself. For details of how to manually install Ghostscript, please read the Ghostscript documentation files Install.htm and Use.htm.

In short, to install Ghostscript you need:

Unpack Ghostscript files with subdirs into separate dir, e.g. c:\gs.
Set environment variable GS_LIB=c:\gs\lib;c:\gs\fonts.
If you are using PostScript fonts, you can add dir where it located into GS_LIB. For example, GS_LIB=c:\gs\lib;c:\gs\fonts;c:\psfonts.

NB 1: gswlx do not need any environment variable to be set. All settings done in gswlx settings dialog box.

NB 2. There is Additional Ghostscript options edit field in dialog box gswlx settings. You can add anything you want. For more information see Use.htm in doc directory of Ghostscript.

NB 3. Ghostscript may be compiled with some of library files and fonts to be compiled into the executable. So all you need will be one big DLL. You can download such a variant of GS 8.53 from http://olnd.narod.ru/gsdll32.cab (2.1 Mb).

Plugin settings

Dialog box “gswlx settings”

About Ghostscript paths see above.

Rest fiaelds:

Update interval. When rendering GS periodically updates bitmap. This value allows user to control frequency of screen updating when rendering.
Max. resolution. For storing bitmap plugin uses memory. This value helps to limit its usage.
Use alpha bits (antialising). If this box checked arguments -dGraphicsAlphaBits=n and -dTextAlphaBits=n with values of Graphics and Text will be added for GS initialization. For more information see Use.htm in GS docs.
In Font samples group you can set base point size of font samples and what samples you want to see.

Menu commands

Colour/Antialiasing do same work as Use alpha bits (antialising) check box in dialog box “gswlx settings” (see above).
Colour/Cache fonts. If this command not checked argument -dNOCACHE will be added for GS initialization. It will slow down text rendering but usefull when there are rotated on non divisible by 90° angle text strings in picture. For more information see Use.htm in GS docs.

Using plugin

Keyboard

arrow keys — scroll image by 10% of window size.
Ctrl+left/right arrows — scroll left/right by 90% of window size.
Ctrl+down/up arrows — next/previous page.
PgUp / PgDn — scroll up/down by 90% of window size. At start/end of page — jump to previous/nex page.
Home / End — top / bottom of page.
Space — at bottom of page — next page, same as PgDn otherwise. If there is not such page nearest will be shown.
BackSpace — at top of page — previous page, same as PgUp otherwise.
G — go to page number.
R — redisplay page.
`, ~, Num * — fit image to window.
/, Num / — fit image by width of window.
Alt+1 — 72 dpi.
Alt+2 — 96 dpi.
Alt+3 — 150 dpi.
Alt+4 — 300 dpi.
+, Alt_Up / –, Alt+Down — increase/decrease resolution by 20%.
Alt+left / Alt+right / Ctrl+Alt+right/left — rotate image 90° CCW / 90° CW / 180°.
Tab / Shift+Tab — Flip image horizontally/vertically.
Alt+0 — clear transformations.
Ctrl+Tab — switch to text out and back.
Ctrl+S — save image to file.
Ctrl+C — copy image or text into clipboard.
Alt+F10 — shortcut menu.

Mouse

Press left button and drag image in window.
Wheel — vertical scroll. At bottom (top) of page rotating wheel more will move to next (previous) page.
Shift+Wheel — horizontal scroll.
Ctrl+Wheel — change resolution.
Right button — shortcut menu.
Right button with Left button pressed — next page.
Left button with Right button pressed — previous page.

Bitmap saving

Created bitmap can be saved in following formats:

Window Bitmap (BMP).
PostScript (Level 2) with LZW or RLE compression, or without.
Encapsulated PostScript (Level and compression same as PostScript).
TIFF 6.0 with or without LZW compression.

For grayscale and color (RGB) images LZW can be used with or without differencing predictor. A predictor is a mathematical operator that is applied to the image data before an encoding scheme is applied. Differencing predictor predicts that each color component of a sample will be the same as the corresponding color component of the sample immediately to the left. In case of grayscale and color images (not all, not always) it can give noticeable decreasing of file size. For some images result may be reversed.

Saved PoastScript file can be sent directly into PostScript printer. It is useful in case of big or complex PS file, when processing in printer or transmission into it occupes a long time.

Bitmap can be added to an EPS file as a preview (menu command Add EPS preview). This preview can be used by a page composition software (like PageMaker) for displaying on a screen or for printing on non PostScript printer.

Translation

gswlx translations:

German. Translated by TychoBarfy.
Simplified Chinese. Translated by Lue Kliz.

To translate messages into another language open language file with command Language file/Choose... from shortcut menu.

If you want to translate to another language copy gswlx_ru.lng and change Russian lines into your language.

Known issues

In B/W mode at some resolutions Ghostscript (ver. 8.30 and above) sets invalid parameters for 'display' device. In this situation slightly change resolution.
Ghostscript and gswlx can not display all Adobe Illustrator files because:
- When exporting into AI file Corel Draw don't write necessary ProcSet's into file.
- Ghostscript can display contents of AI file with version 9 and above if it saved with Create PDF Compatible File option is on. File will be about two times greater.
As written in History*.htm of Ghostscript documentation, it supports PDF 1.5 starting with version 8.30 and PDF 1.6 from version 8.50.
gswlx can not display random page in PostScript file and when user goes to not 1st page gswlx shows all pages before.

New versions

See http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/gswlx.html

Author

Oleg Bondar aka Hobo (hobo-mts at mail pnt ru). Change 'at' to at and 'pnt' to point character.

Subject of message must contain word 'gswlx'.

History

0.2 beta6 (2007/07/06)

Added German translation.
Plugin settings may be saved in plugin dir. See How to install plugin

0.2 beta5 (2007/07/02)

Added saving bitmap in PostScript, EPS and TIFF formats.
Bitmap can be attached to an EPS file as preview.
Settings now saved in default ini-file as recommended in "Writing lister plugins", not in the plugin dir.

0.2 beta4 (2006/06/20)

Fixed: when scale was fit image to window/width/height redrawing of page made zooming out or in.
Added option to control font caching.
Added text messages for GS error codes.
Text and graphics output may be switched when rendering.

0.2 beta3 (2006/06/05)

Fixed: now plugin works with GS 7.04 and above.
Ctrl+C copies selected text from text window when it active.
Displaying of image may be interrupted.
Fixed: files with names that contain non balanced parentheses ( ) were not opened.
Added translation to simplified Chinese language.
Added new mouse controls: slipping and double buttons clicks.
Added color modes: grayscale, indexed and B/W.
Added options to save image into file and copy into clipboard.
Options for antialiasing expanded.
Added pluginst.inf.
Meaningless context menu items grayed.

0.2 beta2 (2006/05/19)

Changed detect string. Please reinstall plugin or edit wincmd.ini to change string ?_detect= in section [ListerPlugins] to
"MULTIMEDIA & (EXT="PS" | EXT="PRN" | EXT="EPS" | EXT="AI" | EXT="PDF" | EXT = "PFB") | FIND("%!PS-Adobe-") | ([0]="%" & [1]="!")"
In gswlx settings dialog box strings Ghostscript DLL, Directories with Ghostscript library files and Additional Ghostscript options may contain environment variables such as %COMMANDER_PATH%.

0.2 beta (2006/05/17)

Second public beta.
Many other changes.

0.1 beta (2006/02/08)

Initial public beta.