#189 pdf export does not work

[Andrew Paplinski]

Xfig 3.2.9a under Cygwin64 on Win11 with gs10.04.0
export correctly eps and ps that can be converted ps2pdf into correct pdf, but
exporting pdf produce the following error message:

Error message from spawned process: /bin/sh: line 1: gs: command not found
Error in ghostcript command,
gs -q -dSAFER -dAutoRotatePages=/None -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -o '-' -: No such file or directory

Your help will be hugely appreciated
Andrew

[Andrew Paplinski]

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

As I said below I have  ghostscript gs10.04.0 installed that handles
properly exporting postscript but not pdf.
Maybe I have to re-install the gs again.
When I run gs from a shell, I got the error:

sh-5.2$ gs &
[1] 1451
sh-5.2$ GPL Ghostscript 10.04.0 (2024-09-18)
Copyright (C) 2024 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software is supplied under the GNU AGPLv3 and comes with NO
WARRANTY:
see the file COPYING for details.
Error: /undefinedfilename in --findlibfile--
Operand stack:
    ()
Execution stack:
    %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   findlibfile
--nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval-- findlibfile  
findlibfile   false   1   %stopped_push findlibfile   1815   1   3  
%oparray_pop   findlibfile
Dictionary stack:
    --dict:746/1123(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)-- --dict:85/200(L)--
Current allocation mode is local
Last OS error: No such file or directory
GPL Ghostscript 10.04.0: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

Any comments will be most welcome.

Andrew

--
Dr Andrew P Paplinski

[Roland Rosenfeld]

Sounds to me that you have to install the ghostscript package to make this work (gs is the short name of ghostscript).

[tkl]

Does calling fig2dev from the commandline work?

fig2dev img.fig img.pdf

This is what xfig calls when exporting to pdf.

[Andrew Paplinski]

On 9/02/2025 7:57 am, tkl wrote:

Does calling fig2dev from the commandline work?

|fig2dev img.fig img.pdf |

This is what xfig calls when exporting to pdf.

It creates an empty *.pdf .  where an error message would go?

Andrew

[Andrew Paplinski]

However, the sequence

fig2def ab.fig ab.ps
ps2pdf ab.ps

produces the perfect pdf file.

Andrew

[tkl]

It creates an empty *.pdf . where an error message would go?

The error message should go to stderr, nothing special when calling fig2dev from the commandline. This is strange.

[Andrew Paplinski]

Dear tkl,

I might be on something:  I have gs installed in C:\gs\gs10.04.0\bin
However, in the bin directory there is no gs command only  gswin64 and
gswin64c
However , xfig needs to find   gs .
I tried to put a file called gs in C:\gs\gs10.04.0\bin with a one line
contents  gswinc $*

It makes the difference, but not completely:

if I call gs -h from the Cygwin64 Terminal, I can se the correct path:

Search path:
    C:\gs\gs10.04.0\bin ; C:\gs\gs10.04.0\lib ; C:\gs\gs10.04.0\fonts ;
    %rom%Resource/Init/ ; %rom%lib/ ; c:/gs/gs10.04.0/Resource/Init ;
    c:/gs/gs10.04.0/lib ; c:/gs/gs10.04.0/Resource/Font ; c:/gs/fonts

however,  ps2pdf  produces an  Error: /undefinedfilename in (aa.eps\r)

The question is where the gs command should be and in what a form.

Cheers

Andrew

[tkl]

Thank you for investigating further. The gs file contains the one line "gswinc", not "gswin64c"? Does Windows expand "gswinc" to find the correct executable?

In the gs file you mentioned, try to put gswinc "$@" . $* expands to all arguments, but splits at each whitespace. The latter form preserves whitespace, if there are, in arguments.

Do you compile fig2dev from sources? If so, you could set the name or the entire path to gs at configuration time,

./configure GSEXE=gswin64c
# or perhaps gswinc? Or, if the above does not work
./configure GSEXE=C:\gs\gs10.04.0\bin\gswin64c
# and then (probably after make clean)
make 

./configure --help prints a one-liner about GSEXE, how to set variables in the first few lines of the help output and the meaning of the variables at the end of the output. Currently, the ./configure script searches for gs, gswin32c, gsos2, gswin32, but not for gswin64c. If this is the underlying issue, the configure script should be modified accordingly. I am quite curious, whether setting GSEXE as above would help.

Yours,

Thomas

[Andrew Paplinski]

Thanks, Thomas

On 10/02/2025 9:00 pm, tkl wrote:

Thank you for investigating further. The gs file contains the one line
"gswinc", not "gswin64c"? Does Windows expand "gswinc" to find the
correct executable?

That I do not know.

In the gs file you mentioned, try to put |gswinc "$@"| . $* expands to
all arguments, but splits at each whitespace. The latter form
preserves whitespace, if there are, in arguments.

have just tried  gswin64c  $@
Does not make any difference. Same error as in the original email.

Do you compile fig2dev from sources? If so, you could set the name or
the entire path to gs at configuration time,

No, unfortunately.  xfig comes as part of the Cygwin.
|./configure GSEXE=gswin64c # or perhaps gswinc? Or, if the above does
not work ./configure GSEXE=C:\gs\gs10.04.0\bin\gswin64c # and then
(probably after make clean) make |

./configure --help prints a one-liner about GSEXE, how to set
variables in the first few lines of the help output and the meaning of
the variables at the end of the output. Currently, the ./configure
script searches for gs, gswin32c, gsos2, gswin32, but not for
gswin64c. If this is the underlying issue, the configure script should
be modified accordingly. I am quite curious, whether setting GSEXE as
above would help.

as I said, the current version of ghostscript comes with two
executables: gswin64,  gswin64c .  c is a version for "console". it
opens Ghostscript  in the cygwin terminal.

Cheers,

Andrew (from au. current time 21:18)

[tkl]

To be precise, "$@" enclosed by the quotation marks. Hence, the script should exactly contain

#!/bin/sh
gswin64c "$@"

and have the executable bit set, chmod +x C:\gs\gs10.04.0\bin\gs.

Sorry for the adventures; I have looked now at the cygwin package, and it reports a build failure. For the time being, it seems for now there is only the workaround to export from xfig to .eps (or .ps, for a letter- or A4-sized document) and converting manually with ps2pdf to pdf. Improvements to the build-process will likely arrive in cygwin packages only in the next release.

[Andrew Paplinski]

On 10/02/2025 10:38 pm, tkl wrote:

To be precise, "$@" enclosed by the quotation marks. Hence, the script
should exactly contain

|#!/bin/sh gswin64c"$@"|

The double quote has made the difference.
Now   fig2dev aa.fig aa.pdf
works nicely producing the correct pdf with the bounding box.

In addition :-( , it generates error messages as below that makes no
difference;

|Error: /undefinedfilename in --findlibfile--|
|Operand stack:|
|   ()|
|Execution stack:|
|   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval-- findlibfile  
--nostringval--   2   %stopped_push --nostringval--   findlibfile  
findlibfile   false   1 %stopped_push   findlibfile   1815   1   3  
%oparray_pop findlibfile|
|Dictionary stack:|
|   --dict:752/1123(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)-- --dict:85/200(L)--|
|Current allocation mode is local|
|Last OS error: No such file or directory|
|GPL Ghostscript 10.04.0: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1|
|Error in ghostcript command,|
|  gs -q -dSAFER -dAutoRotatePages=/None -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -o 'aa.pdf' -: No
such file or directory|
||

In conclusion, I am satisfied and grateful for your help.
Will wait for the next release of cygwin.

Cheers,

Andrew

[tkl]

Good to hear. Strange errore message, "Unrecoverable error", so gs might write the output file, here aa.pdf, then look for some lib (findlibfile), and fails. Thus findlibfile seems to be unnecessary.

Yours,

Thomas

[tkl]

In any case, there may be an issue similar to the one reported in macports ticket 68751: Xfig does not pass the environment to the spawned process, e.g., a modified PATH. Previously, not sure but probably before version 3.2.9, xfig used popen(), system() and friends. These commands invoke a shell, hence do all the shell initialisation, setting paths etc., and also pass the full environment. I tried by moving gs to a different location and writing a small wrapper script containing "export >/tmp/gs_env".

Xfig does not really need the ghostscript executable, xfig is usually linked to the ghostscript library at build time. However, there is an option and a resource to set the path to the executable: The user rightly should expect that such path is passed to sub-processes; Fig2dev currently calls gs using system() or popen(). I should either link fig2dev to gslib, making gs thus a dependency of fig2dev. Or pass the environment from xfig, and probably also implement an environment variable in fig2dev to allow the user to set the path to gs.

[tkl]

Keeping this ticket open, to remember
- to add gswin64c to the executables searched for during ./configure
- add an environment variable, e.g, FIG2DEV_GS, to give the user the possibility to override the path to ghostscript,
- probably contact cygwin to patch their current xfig distribution.

[Andrew Paplinski]

thanks again  :-)
Andrew

On 11/02/2025 8:57 pm, tkl wrote:

Keeping this ticket open, to remember
- to add gswin64c to the executables searched for during ./configure
- add an environment variable, e.g, FIG2DEV_GS, to give the user the
possibility to override the path to ghostscript,
- probably contact cygwin to patch their current xfig distribution.

---

[tickets:#189] https://sourceforge.net/p/mcj/tickets/189/ pdf
export does not work

Status: open
Created: Sat Feb 08, 2025 06:41 AM UTC by Andrew Paplinski
Last Updated: Tue Feb 11, 2025 09:50 AM UTC
Owner: tkl

Xfig 3.2.9a under Cygwin64 on Win11 with gs10.04.0
export correctly eps and ps that can be converted ps2pdf into correct
pdf, but
exporting pdf produce the following error message:

Error message from spawned process: /bin/sh: line 1: gs: command not found
Error in ghostcript command,
gs -q -dSAFER -dAutoRotatePages=/None -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -o '-' -: No such
file or directory

Your help will be hugely appreciated
Andrew

---

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