Scribus and Ghostscript

[xiamenese]

Hello, those in the know ...

I have installed a copy of Scribus on my MBP, as I can't afford to upgrade InDesign from CS1, my computers run 10.6.7, so ID won't really run and Lion will kill it, and although I have an external drive that will boot the MBP into 10.4, I've found that's more hassle than its worth as I don't need it that often.

Scribus looks as if it'll do what I want, though in a much more clunky interface, and of course it seems not to import RTF, only plain text ... I can live with that.

My problem is that it comes up with an alert that my computer doesn't have GhostScript installed, which it might need. I therefore downloaded the newest functional — i.e. non-source-version — of GhostScript, unzipped/tarred whatever it ... and I found a unix executable and a couple of text files, neither of which told me what I should do with the unix executable, where I should put it.

I am minded of the person on the Windows forum who said they would never want to have a computer that they didn't have to beat into submission (i.e. a Mac)

Advice gratefully received.

Mark

[Markio]

It isn't necessary to install GS for Scribus, I found it in the Apple forums here.

greetings, Mark

[xiamenese]

Thanks, Markio. I have my GhostScript executable, it is currently sitting in my downloads folder; what I don't know is where it should go so that Scribus can find it ... I presume it should go somewhere in the system library, but it might have to go in the Scribus application package somewhere ...

I know I don't need it unless I want to include EPS graphics in my documents — a possibility, albeit a fairly remote one — though it does seem you need it for previewing. But I don't want to be told that it is not installed every time I start Scribus.

But nowhere does anyone say where it should go ...

Mark

[Markio]

Just install Ghostscript. Next in preferences, under the section "external tools", you have to tell scribus where gs is installed. (in the terminal you get the path through the command `which gs`)
I hope this helps, I am not a mac user but found this in a forum.

greetings, Mark

[mbbntu]

Mark, you might have found the answer by now, but I think this link has all the information (unless things have moved on in the interim):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/19 ... ID=1942985

Best, Martin.

[xiamenese]

Thank you Markio and Martin.

To go in reverse order:

As it happens, the Apple page you referred me to, Martin, was the same as the one Markio provided the link to. It also dates back to 2009 and when I clicked on the download link for the compiled version it returned a "404 Page not found". But that wasn't a problem as I already had a compiled more recent version sitting in my downloads folder. But helpful as Matt's answers were, he didn't give any response which simply answered the question "Where does the ghostscript go?" (Personal note: seems you're now in Cambridge; have you moved from NTU to Cambridge? I did my BA at Cambridge and loved it so much I had to move away so as not to end up in the proverbial ivory tower!)

Markio, thanks indeed. Though you didn't answer the question directly as to where and how to install it, you gave me the clue as to what to do. I put the whole downloaded and unzipped ghostscript folder into my <Applications> folder and then linked to it as you explained -- though no need for command line shenanigans. I'm not on that machine now, but I'm wondering if the instructions are in the manual, which I presume exists, and if so you have every right to say to me "RTFM!"

Mark

[mbbntu]

Mark,

Thanks for yours -- and I probably should have investigated the previous post a little more carefully! When I tried Scribus a few years ago, it didn't work at all. If it works now, I'm glad to hear it.

Yes, I'm back in Cambridge now. I plonked down 80,000 words of thesis on someone's desk six weeks ago and promptly retired to lie on my bed and read Jane Austen novels until I could raise the energy to walk more than a hundred yards without needing to sit down. It's been a long period of stress, and I was quite exhausted. Thankfully I'm beginning to recover now. I was brought up in Cambridge, so it is doubly special to me. I have friends here, and there is an unbeatable library. And I've just been to a couple of lectures by Alfred Brendel. You don't get that kind of thing in Nottingham! Now all I have to do is find a way of earning a living, which I suspect will be almost impossible!

All the best, Martin.

PS: I was brought up in cloud cuckoo land, which was where my parents lived, so an ivory tower seems quite normal to me.