OT: Command-line blues (ImageMagick)

[Graham Samuel]

Thanks Roger for reading through my long email. It is true that IM includes GhostScript. The main problem for me is that as well as reading PDFs, I want to read TIFFs. Using IM kills these two birds with one stone; but this would not be a solution if my target platform was a Mac, because of the installation problems I've outlined. As a matter of interest, was the installation of GS on the Mac in your project sufficiently straightforward that it could be packaged for someone with no experience outside the use of conventional installers for 'normal' (i.e. Mac GUI-based) apps? You seem to say that it's not problematic.

Once installed, I think IM works well and I will eventually understand the difference between the LS 'shell' command and just using the command line via a Terminal-type interface - I've written another mail to the list on this.

Graham

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:49:47 -0400, Roger Eller <roger.e.eller at sealedair.com> wrote:

> I am still of the opinion that you are making it more difficult on yourself
> by using IM since IM  *needs*  Ghostscript to do many of its conversions.
> Both offer command-line interfaces. And to answer one of your questions,
> most command-line tools do simply quit all by themselves after being called
> via shell.
> 
> I made a program which works on Windows and Mac, and uses Ghostscript to
> convert PDF to JPG or PNG. Installation was simple, in my opinion. Install
> GS, then install my app. Within my app, there is a preference pane where you
> simply point to the location of the GS executable. The rest is done via
> shell following the GS command-line reference docs.
> 
> Look around where you installed ImageMagik. I think you'll find Ghostscript.
> 
> ?Roger