[gs-devel] new beta release AFPL Ghostscript 8.30

[Ralph Giles]

Artifex Software, Inc. and artofcode LLC are pleased to announce a new 
beta release, AFPL Ghostscript 8.30. This is a testing release of our 
development tree and is the first milestone toward the 8.50 major 
release.

This is an early beta release and should not be used for production 
work; it is only intended for those interested in a preview and in
helping us test.

New features in this version :

 * Topological grid fitting, an original method developed for 
Ghostscript by Dr. Igor V. Melichev, improves the rendering of True Type 
fonts at small resolutions. See the documentation for GridFitTT for 
information on this feature.

* The PDF writer now implements PDF 1.4 encryption. See the encryption 
parameter documentation for more information.

* A new rendering method for shadings, developed for Ghostscript by Dr. 
Igor V. Melichev, improves the quality and performance of rasterization 
on continuous tone devices. The new method allows hardware or software 
acceleration with help of customizable routines for filling areas with a 
linearly varying color. functions.

* This version contains the first release of Rinkj, an experimental new 
driver for some inkjet printers using ETS screening. See the Rinkj 
section of the Devices documentation for more information.

* We now support PDF 1.5 files, including the new compression and 
encryption modes.

* We have beta support for Jpeg2000 compressed images, using the JasPer 
compression library. This is only enabled as part of the default build 
in the autoconf (POSIX) build system in this release.


The release is available from the usual locations:

    ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/AFPL/gs830/
    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1897&package_id=10647&release_id=242760

Currently only unix source archives are available. Packages for other 
platforms wil follow in a few days.

MD5 checksums:

    0c82873f1a981e8e7925c5e6b4e42d28  ghostscript-8.30.tar.bz2
    50221f4b3d5a39465ea3263881e52de6  ghostscript-8.30.tar.gz

SHA-1 checksums:

    aeb5daec3d9ff6d9272c75fac91a8139f5d1312e  ghostscript-8.30.tar.bz2
    68cc9b5745ac6f0be646c375160996b25747c3af  ghostscript-8.30.tar.gz

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

 -r

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