[OS X TeX] Distiller

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 29 janv. 06 à 14:58, Maarten Sneep a écrit :

> On 29 Jan 2006, at 14:47, Alain Matthes wrote:
>
>> also why not use Apple Distiller by default.
>> Why do we need ghostscript? (pb of licence ?)
>
> Historic: Apple didn't deliver a postscript distiller until 10.3  
> (or even 10.4, I regularly mix version up). Another reason is  
> speed: the Apple Distiller can only distill one (eps) file at a  
> time, and is rather slow.

Plus Apple Distiller doesn't use compression by default, while  
GhostScript does (at least when invoked by epstopdf, when dragging  
the EPS file onto TeXShop). Given that pdfTeX and XeTeX produce  
compressed PDF output, this mean the compression of PDF images,  
created by Apple Distiller, will be redone at each pdfTeX or XeTeX  
run and make it much longer; this doesn't happen when the PDF images  
have been created by GS.

That said, I have seen EPS files opened successfully by GS while  
Apple Distiller couldn't open them, and I have also seen EPS files  
opened successfully by Apple Distiller while GS couldn't open them.

Nowadays I tend to use Apple Distiller more and more: it's so  
convenient to double-click a file in the Finder, and have Preview  
open it, without bothering of which format (PNG, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PS,  
PDF, ...) the file is in. Using Apple Distiller provides more  
compatibility with Mac OS X applications (such as Keynote, Pages),  
while GS provides probably more compatibility when collaborating with  
colleagues on Linux.

Bruno Voisin------------------------- Info --------------------------
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