gs 8.01 won't create OutputFile from PS (Debian sarge, i386)

[Mathias Bage]

Hi!

I stumbled upon a strange bug after installing gs 8.01
Debian package name: gs-gpl
             version: 8.01-5
              MD5sum: a4e21919b8009e88f06a032b39972bba



Never seen anything like this before, and I've used gs (both GNU 
and aladdin) since 1992.

The attached PS file (generated by mozilla 1.7.2) just won't generate any
useful output for non-x11 devices (haven't tried them all, just bmp and 
png.)

But it's rendered OK on x11* devices!


  gs -sDEVICE=pnmraw -sOutputFile=/tmp/output.%02d -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
     ps_file_that_triggers_ghostscript-8.01_bug.ps

will not generate any '/tmp/output.[0-9][0-9]' file at all.


  gs -sDEVICE=ljet4 -sOutputFile=/tmp/output.%02d -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
     ps_file_that_triggers_ghostscript-8.01_bug.ps

will generate an empty file '/tmp/output.01'.


However, after feeding it through ps2pdf13 (and feeding the PDF file to 
gs, i.e. no round-trip back to PS), it suddenly works!

With DEVICE=pnmraw, it generated '/tmp/output.01' (1503038 bytes).

With DEVICE=ljet4, it generated '/tmp/output.01' (406178 bytes) AND an 
empty '/tmp/output.02'.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
  Mathias Bage
  Stockholm, Sweden