[bug-gswin] Setting DEVICE=pdfwrite says " Unable to open the initialdevice"

[David Karr]

Ok, that command line works fine.  Thanks.

Actually, the reason I was working down at the gswin32 command-line 
level was that I was getting this same error when I just 
ran "ps2pdf".  Although, I was probably getting that and related tools 
from my Cygwin path.  I find the ghostscript versioning between Cygwin 
and non-Cygwin somewhat confusing.

----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Johnston <ray.johnston@artifex.com>
Date: Thursday, January 16, 2003 11:49 am
Subject: Re: [bug-gswin] Setting DEVICE=pdfwrite says " Unable to open 
the  initialdevice"

> David,
> 
> The command line options are case sensitive, so -SDEVICE= is not 
> correct.
> You need to use -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
> 
> The message results from attempting to open the default device 
> (whateverit is for your build -- gswin32c -h will tell you).
> 
> Note that to send the PDF file to stdout (using -sOutputFile=-) you
> should also make sure and suppress other messages. Also, you 
> should use
> the .setpdfwrite command to set internal options correctly for 
> using the
> pdfwrite device (the ps2pdf.bat script does this automatically). The
> correct command line is:
> 
> /c/gs/gs8.00/bin/gswin32c -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -
> sOutputFile=- -c .setpdfwrite -f test.ps
> 
> Regards,
> Ray Johnston
> 
_______________________________________________________________________
_
> David Karr wrote:
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Symptoms:
> > I run:
> > /c/gs/gs8.00/bin/gswin32c -SDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=- test.ps
> > 
> > and it prints:
> > 
> > AFPL Ghostscript 8.00 (2002-11-21)
> > Copyright (C) 2002 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA.  All rights 
reserved.
> > This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for 
> details.> **** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Ghostscript version (or include output from "gs -h"):
> > AFPL Ghostscript 8.00 (2002-11-21)
> > Copyright (C) 2002 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA.  All rights 
reserved.
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Where you got Ghostscript:
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript/
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Hardware system you are using (including printer model if the 
> problem> involves printing):
> > 
> > IBM NetVista PC
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Operating system you are using:
> > Windows XP, with Cygwin 1.3.18-1.
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > If you are using X Windows, and your problem involved output to the
> > screen, the output from running xdpyinfo and xwininfo:
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > C compiler you are using, including its version, if you compiled
> > Ghostscript yourself:
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > If you compiled Ghostscript yourself, changes you made to the
> > makefiles:
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Environment variables:
> > 
> >         GS_DEVICE
> > 
> >         GS_FONTPATH
> > 
> >         GS_LIB
> > 
> >         GS_OPTIONS
> > 
> > These are all unset.
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Command line:
> > /c/gs/gs8.00/bin/gswin32c -SDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=- test.ps
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > URL or FTP location of test files (include the data at the end 
> of this
> > form if 500K or less):
> > 
> > "test.ps" is 10221 bytes, so I'll include it at the end.
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Suggested fix, if any:
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > -
> > Other comments:
> > 
> >   ---------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> >               Name: test.ps
> >    test.ps    Type: Gvim File (application/postscript)
> >           Encoding: base64
>