[XeTeX] ghostscript version

[Mike Maxwell]

On 8/28/2010 9:56 AM, George N. White III wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Mike
> Maxwell<maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu>  wrote:
>> So: is there a way to tell xdvipdfmx where to look for the gs
>> executable?
>
> Try 'xdvipdfmx -h" which will give you the "-D" option.   Then look
> for the default setting in the config file.   On mine TL2010, this
> invokes a luatex script called rungs, which serves mainly to handle
 > the different default names (gswin32c on
> windows and gs for the rest of the world) for ghostscript.

OK, I had ignored the -D option because the output of the -h arg says:
     PS->PDF conversion command line template [none]
and afaik, I'm not doing anything with plain postscript (I guess that's 
what the 'PS' refers to).  Evidently I shouldn't have ignored it.

But what is this "command line template" the -D option wants? I've tried
   -D /usr/local/bin/gs
While it then uses the correct gs (v8.71), it now fails with the 
following msg:
    GPL Ghostscript 8.71: Cannot open X display `(null)'.

    ** ERROR ** pdf_ref_obj(): passed invalid object.
I'm guessing this might be because gs was trying to send its output to 
the screen, so I tried adding an option to the gs cmd, namely:
   -D "/usr/local/bin/gs -sOutputFile=- "
But this gives the same error msg.  This is sending it to stdout, so I 
guess it is still trying to send it to the screen; but I don't know 
where else to send its output.

I've tried a number of variants on the above, and sometimes get 
different error msgs--but I can't figure out what the right parameters 
must be.

Do I need to modify the rungs.tlu script to tell it where the correct 
'gs' is?  This seems heavy handed; surely there's a better way?  I don't 
see a config file anywhere for gs or rungs.  (As I mentioned, I don't 
want to rely on my PATH.)
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
         "A library is the best possible imitation, by human beings,
         of a divine mind, where the whole universe is viewed and
         understood at the same time... we have invented libraries
         because we know that we do not have divine powers, but we
         try to do our best to imitate them." --Umberto Eco