Why can't I view PostScript file in my browser (Firefox)?

[y***@beedwi.e4ward.com]

Something I have been wishing for forever, is the ability to display PostScript files in my favorite browser (or any browser). I mean, the ability to display PDF files now seems to be standard feature of modern browsers, so WHY NOT POSTSCRIPT? And no, I don't mean the behavior when you try to display a .ps file, it opens up that little Microsoft popup asking if you want to "Open with" or "Save with", and if you choose "Open with", then it just runs the file with GSView in its own separate window. I want it to be integrated into the browser so you see it as a separate page under a separate TAB.

I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it? And yet browsers don't know how to render it? Shameful!

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
Something I have been wishing for forever, is the ability to display
PostScript files in my favorite browser (or any browser). I mean, the
ability to display PDF files now seems to be standard feature of
modern browsers, so WHY NOT POSTSCRIPT? And no, I don't mean the
behavior when you try to display a .ps file, it opens up that little
Microsoft popup asking if you want to "Open with" or "Save with", and
if you choose "Open with", then it just runs the file with GSView in
its own separate window. I want it to be integrated into the browser
so you see it as a separate page under a separate TAB.
I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it? And
yet browsers don't know how to render it? Shameful!

You can always patch Firefox.

Otherwise, there are in-browser pdf viewers, so you could convert your
ps to a pdf.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

Post by Pascal J. Bourguignon

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it? And
yet browsers don't know how to render it? Shameful!

You can always patch Firefox.
Otherwise, there are in-browser pdf viewers, so you could convert your
ps to a pdf.

Yes, of course, but the question remains. These days, browsers can do
almost anything except display PostScript. Why not?

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Post by Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

Post by Pascal J. Bourguignon

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it? And
yet browsers don't know how to render it? Shameful!

You can always patch Firefox.
Otherwise, there are in-browser pdf viewers, so you could convert your
ps to a pdf.

Yes, of course, but the question remains. These days, browsers can do
almost anything except display PostScript. Why not?

Because you didn't patch Firefox and made a push request!

[luser droog]

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
Something I have been wishing for forever, is the ability to display PostScript files in my favorite browser (or any browser). I mean, the ability to display PDF files now seems to be standard feature of modern browsers, so WHY NOT POSTSCRIPT? And no, I don't mean the behavior when you try to display a .ps file, it opens up that little Microsoft popup asking if you want to "Open with" or "Save with", and if you choose "Open with", then it just runs the file with GSView in its own separate window. I want it to be integrated into the browser so you see it as a separate page under a separate TAB.
I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it? And yet browsers don't know how to render it? Shameful!

I understand your frustration. I think PostScript is largely a victim of its
history and the time it came of age. If you look at the NeWS experiment, it
was almost there. But in the NeWSbook we see that it had already almost been
there with interlispD and Smalltalk. But somehow it turned out to be javascript.

It could've been postscript, or even lisp for that matter. But it is what it is.
Part of the problem is that it is a scripting language, so it's inherently not
securable. We have -dSAFER but that only goes so far. Javascript has these same
problems, but we've mitigated or ignored various of the dangers.

Another problem is licencing. Unless Artifex themselves want to develop and
distribute a plugin for one or more browsers, then someone has to licence the
interpreter in order to offer it bundled up. Or Adobe, .... But there's no
real technical or economic need for anyone to do this.

Xpost can be used as the basis for a plugin that could be distributed, but the
output quality is far inferior to gs currently. So it would be a lot of work
for somewhat meager result.

[y***@beedwi.e4ward.com]

Post by luser droog
I understand your frustration. I think PostScript is largely a victim of its
history and the time it came of age. If you look at the NeWS experiment, it
was almost there. But in the NeWSbook we see that it had already almost been
there with interlispD and Smalltalk. But somehow it turned out to be javascript.
It could've been postscript, or even lisp for that matter. But it is what it is.
Part of the problem is that it is a scripting language, so it's inherently not
securable. We have -dSAFER but that only goes so far. Javascript has these same
problems, but we've mitigated or ignored various of the dangers.
Another problem is licencing. Unless Artifex themselves want to develop and
distribute a plugin for one or more browsers, then someone has to licence the
interpreter in order to offer it bundled up. Or Adobe, .... But there's no
real technical or economic need for anyone to do this.
Xpost can be used as the basis for a plugin that could be distributed, but the
output quality is far inferior to gs currently. So it would be a lot of work
for somewhat meager result.

That's interesting you should say that. Because guess what? If you type "How to view PostScript in browser" in Google, then the very first thing that comes up is:

If you have Internet Explorer:

In the View menu choose Options.
Select the folder Programs.
Click the File Types button and then the Add button.
Fill out the dialogbox: Description : PS files. MIME type : application/postscript. ...
Find your GSVIEW executable file with the Browse button and click OK if found.
Leave Options.

But if I try to do this on my IE 8, those instructions don't really work. So I think they are VERY OLD instructions. But it does seem like you USED to be able to get IE to display PostScript. Or did that just get it to do what I said I didn't want it to do, which is simply run GSView in a separate window?

Also, the person here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=401205
seems to have gotten it to work in Firefox no less, by using the PDF plugin. But this is back in 2006. I wonder if Firefox still has such a plugin, now that they handle .pdf files by default.

[ken]

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
Also, the person here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=401205
seems to have gotten it to work in Firefox no less, by using the PDF plugin. But this is back in 2006. I wonder if Firefox still has such a plugin, now that they handle .pdf files by default.

That's on a Mac, which has Preview and is capable of converting a
PostScript program into a PDF file as part of the Operating System.

[ken]

Post by luser droog
Another problem is licencing. Unless Artifex themselves want to develop and
distribute a plugin for one or more browsers, then someone has to licence the
interpreter in order to offer it bundled up. Or Adobe, .... But there's no
real technical or economic need for anyone to do this.

That's not completely the csase. Ghostscript *is* open source (AGPL) so
if someone wanted to develop a plugin, and it was AGPL, then there
wouldn't be a problem with the licence. In fact if the plugin forked a
process (which it probably isn't allowed ot do :-) then it wouldn't even
need to link to Ghostscript.

Lots of Linux applications use Ghostscript as a plugin, or fork it as a
process.

Artifex almost certainly won't do it, we don't have the engineering
resource to do so.

[Martin Leese]

***@beedwi.e4ward.com wrote:
...

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it?

Nope. Used to be, but that was a long time
ago.

I personally believe the rot set in when
Microsoft Windows was unable to display
natively a PostScript file.

[Eli the Bearded]

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
Something I have been wishing for forever, is the ability to display
PostScript files in my favorite browser (or any browser).

Ages and ages ago I had it working in Firefox on Linux with a gv plugin.
I seldom used it, and didn't try to keep it working in the year upon
year of updates. (I had one browser profile that was continuously
updated from Netscape 4.5 to Phoenix to Firebird to Firefox up to FF48
or so. It accumulated a lot of bookmarks and user settings over the
years.)

Here's 2004 question about getting gzipped postscript to work as nicely
as plain postscript:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=184802

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
I mean, the ability to display PDF files now seems to be
standard feature of modern browsers, so WHY NOT POSTSCRIPT?

As noted down thread, because no one is working on it.

Post by y***@beedwi.e4ward.com
I mean this IS the preeminent Page Description Language isn't it? And
yet browsers don't know how to render it? Shameful!

Browsers are not page oriented, in the same sense of "page" as
Postscript.

Elijah
------
and recent Firefox has completely changed the interface for extensions