[gs-devel] -dPermissions ignored

Mon May 4 05:24:37 PDT 2009

Hi Russel,

Could you please go into more detail about the "-c" parameter? I read
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Use.htm , which doesn't say it
should be put after all options - but it does use "-f", which seems to
be a terminator for "-c". My understanding was that if I use "-f"
after the parameters passed to "-c" (e.g. "setvmthreshold"), then "-c"
can be put anywhere I want (i.e. not after all options)?

The reason I'm asking is I want to increase the performance of my
PDF/A conversion. As such I read Use.htm, which recommends adding "-c
30000000 setvmthreshold -f" to my parameters.

If I add the "-c" things, however, no output file gets created, while
it does get created without the "-c", as you can see here:

------------------------------------------------------------------
laelbrec at laelbrec-be /cygdrive/c/temp $ rm bench_test.pdf
rm: remove regular file `bench_test.pdf'? y
removed `bench_test.pdf'

laelbrec at laelbrec-be /cygdrive/c/temp $ time
/cygdrive/d/Applications/gs/gs8.64/bin/gswin32c.exe -q  -c 30000000
setvmthreshold -f -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFA
-dUseCIEColor -sProcessColorModel=DeviceCMYK -sOutputFile=be
nch_test.pdf PDFA_def.ps ZS_107846941.ps
%%[ ProductName: GPL Ghostscript ]%%
%%[Page: 1]%%
%%[Page: 2]%%
%%[LastPage]%%

real    0m0.523s
user    0m0.046s
sys     0m0.000s

laelbrec at laelbrec-be /cygdrive/c/temp $ ls bench_test.pdf
ls: cannot access bench_test.pdf: No such file or directory

laelbrec at laelbrec-be /cygdrive/c/temp $ time
/cygdrive/d/Applications/gs/gs8.64/bin/gswin32c.exe -q -dBATCH
-dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFA -dUseCIEColor
-sProcessColorModel=DeviceCMYK -sOutputFile=bench_test.pdf PDFA_def.ps
ZS_1078
46941.ps
%%[ ProductName: GPL Ghostscript ]%%
%%[Page: 1]%%
%%[Page: 2]%%
%%[LastPage]%%

real    0m0.892s
user    0m0.031s
sys     0m0.000s

laelbrec at laelbrec-be /cygdrive/c/temp $ ls bench_test.pdf
bench_test.pdf*
------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, the "-c" part makes a window show up containing the contents of
the input file (but it does close the window after "converting" the
file (I put the word between quotes as there's no output file).

So I did as you suggested, and put "-c" right before the 2 input files
(i.e. the pdf/a definition file, as I'm using -dPDFA, and the PS file
to convert):

------------------------------------------------------------------
time /cygdrive/d/Applications/gs/gs8.64/bin/gswin32c.exe -q -dBATCH
-dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFA -dUseCIEColor
-sProcessColorModel=DeviceCMYK -sOutputFile=bench_test.pdf -c 30000000
setvmthreshold -f PDFA_def.ps ZS_107846941.ps
%%[ ProductName: GPL Ghostscript ]%%
%%[Page: 1]%%
%%[Page: 2]%%
%%[LastPage]%%

real    0m0.868s
user    0m0.015s
sys     0m0.015s

laelbrec at laelbrec-be /cygdrive/c/temp $ ls bench_test.pdf
bench_test.pdf*
------------------------------------------------------------------

This works perfectly (it even hides the window which showed up before).

What's going on here? I thought the "-f" terminated the "-c". If not,
shouldn't it be added to Use.htm that "-c" must be set at the end of
the command line? Or did I just not see this?

Also, are there other options to improve performance? Like using
something else than "setvmtreshold" (which, if I understand correctly,
has something to do with the type of GC being used)?
The reason I'm asking is that "-c" doesn't help much (though,
admittedly, I'm not using a font with a large character set, AFAIK),
and I'm not using XWindows so dMaxBitmap won't help either.

I've also tried using:
* "-dNOBIND", as I saw it mentioned somewhere for performance
improvements, but that gives me an error ("Error: /undefined in
/.forceput")
* dNOGC (as it was also mentioned somewhere for performance
improvements), but that didn't seem to have any effect.
* a " -c 30000000 -f" (so without a "setvmtreshold"), both with and
without NOGC, but that didn't change anything either.
* a " -c setvmtreshold -f" (so without a "30000000 "), both with and
without NOGC, but that gave me an error ("Error: /stackunderflow in
--setvmthreshold--")

Is there anything else which can be done to improve PS to PDF/A conversion?

I'm also going to let GS convert a great number of Postscript files
(in batches of around 60 000, IIRC) to PDF/A files. Is there something
which can be done to speed this up, i.e. instead of starting
ghostscript again and again for each file, could a text file
containing the list of files be passed to ghostscript? Or would
something like xargs help (would this even be possible, since the
output filename has to change as well)? Or is there a way to pass many
files to the ghostscript command line without using something like
xargs?

I know these are many questions, but performance tuning seems to have
limited documentation (which I understand fully - writing docs is a
quite tedious task), so I hope someone can help me out here.

Thanks a lot and best regards,

Ludovic

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 23:17, Russell Lang <gsview at ghostgum.com.au> wrote:
> All the options must be put before the "-c .setpdfwrite", and before the first input
> filename.
>
> On 30 Apr 2009 at 14:15, HAENEL Florian FDEP-G (AREVA NP GmbH) wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> I want to restrict printing on some of my documents and I am using the following commandline:
>>
>> 126 ¬   gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \\
>> 127 ¬   -sOutputFile=$tempname.pdf -dPDFA -c .setpdfwrite \\
>> 128 ¬   -sOwnerPassword=owner -dEncryptionR=3 -dKeyLength=128 -dPermissions=-3904\\
>> 129 ¬   -dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -r600 \\
>> 130 ¬   -dEmbedAllFonts=true -dSubsetFonts=true -dMaxSubsetPct=100 \\
>> 131 ¬   -dAutoFilterColorImages=false -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false \\
>> 132 ¬   -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dMonoImageFilter=/CCITTFaxEncode \\
>> 133 ¬   -dEncodeColorImages=true -dEncodeGrayImages=true -dEncodeMonoImages=true \\
>> 134 ¬   -dDownsampleGrayImages=false -dDownsampleMonoImages=false \\
>> 135 ¬   -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceCMYK -dUseCIEColor
>>
>> I assume the problem lies in conflicting options like PDFA not supporting encryption, but since gs does not complain,
>> I come here to ask, what the problem might be.
>>
>
>
> Russell Lang                   gsview at ghostgum.com.au
> Ghostgum Software Pty Ltd      http://www.ghostgum.com.au/
>
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