#13265: ghostscript-9.52
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Reporter: bdubbs | Owner: bdubbs
Type: enhancement | Status: assigned
Priority: normal | Milestone: 9.2
Component: BOOK | Version: SVN
Severity: normal | Resolution:
Keywords: |
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Comment (by bdubbs):
Version 9.52 (2020-03-19)
Highlights in this release include:
The 9.52 release replaces the 9.51 release, after a problem was
reported with 9.51 which warranted the quick turnaround. Thus, like 9.51,
9.52 is primarily a maintenance release, consolidating the changes we
introduced in 9.50.
We have continued our work on code hygiene for this release, with a
focus on the static analysis tool Coverity (from Synopsys, Inc) and we
have now adopted a policy of maintaining zero Coverity issues in the
Ghostscript/GhostPDL source base.
IMPORTANT: In consultation with a representative of (OpenPrinting) it
is our intention to deprecate and, in the not distant future, remove the
OpenPrinting Vector/Raster Printer Drivers (that is, the opvp and oprp
devices).
If you rely on either of these devices, please get in touch with us,
so we can discuss your use case, and revise our plans accordingly.
IMPORTANT: We have forked LittleCMS2 into LittleCMS2mt (the "mt"
indicating "multi-thread"). LCMS2 is not thread safe, and cannot be made
thread safe without breaking the ABI. Our fork will be thread safe, and
include performance enhancements (these changes have all be been offered
and rejected upstream). We will maintain compatibility between Ghostscript
and LCMS2 for a time, but not in perpetuity. If there is sufficient
interest, our fork will be available as its own package separately from
Ghostscript (and MuPDF).
The usual round of bug fixes, compatibility changes, and incremental
improvements.
Incompatible changes
Included below are incompatible changes from recent releases (the specific
release in question listed in parentheses). We include these, for now, as
we are aware that not everyone upgrades with every release.
(9.52) As of 9.52, the Windows binaries released by the Ghostscript
development team are built with Microsoft Visual Studio 2019. As a result
Microsoft Windows XP and earlier are no longer supported by these
binaries. This does not imply we are, or will start relying upon features
only available in VS2019, so the nmake Makefiles will continue to allow
older Visual Studio versions (back to VS2005) to build Ghostscript.
(9.52) -dALLOWPSTRANSPARENCY: The transparency compositor (and related
features), whilst we are improving it, remains sensitive to being driven
correctly, and incorrect use can have unexpected/undefined results. Hence,
as part of improving security we limited access to these operators,
originally using the -dSAFER feature. As we made "SAFER" the default mode,
that became unacceptable, hence the new option -dALLOWPSTRANSPARENCY which
enables access to the operators.
(9.50) There are a couple of subtle incompatibilities between the old
and new SAFER implementations. Firstly, as mentioned in the 9.50 release
notes, SAFER now leaves standard Postcript functionality unchanged (except
for the file access limitations). Secondly, the interaction with
save/restore operations, see SAFER.
Important Note for Windows Users:
The file/path pattern matching is case sensitive, even on Windows.
This is a change in behaviour compared to the old code which, on Windows,
was case insensitive. This is in recognition of changes in Windows
behaviour, in that it now supports (although does not enforce) case
sensitivity.
(9.27) The process of "tidying" the Postscript name space should have
removed only non-standard and undocumented operators. Nevertheless, it is
possible that any integrations or utilities that rely on those non-
standard and undocumented operators may stop working, or may change
behaviour.
If you encounter such a case, please contact us (either the
#ghostscript IRC channel, or the gs-devel mailing list would be best), and
we'll work with you to either find an alternative solution or return the
previous functionality, if there is genuinely no other option.
One case we know this has occurred is GSView 5 (and earlier). GSView 5
support for PDF files relied upon internal use only features which are no
longer available. GSView 5 will still work as previously for Postscript
files. For PDF files, users are encouraged to look at MuPDF.
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