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Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages.

There are several versions of Ghostscript:

• - GPL Ghostscript is the canonical variant available under the GNU General Public License, which is a free software license. Before June 2006, the leading edge of Ghostscript development was distributed as AFPL Ghostscript (formerly named Aladdin Ghostscript) under the Aladdin Free Public License, which restricts commercial use. AFPL Ghostscript is now abandoned.
• - GNU Ghostscript is part of the GNU project and is now derived from GPL Ghostscript.
• - ESP Ghostscript was distributed by Easy Software Products under the GPL. It was based on GPL Ghostscript and contains several modifications to improve compatibility with ESP's Common Unix Printing System. This version is no longer developed, since it was merged with GPL Ghostscript.
• Ghostscript is the current commercial proprietary version licensed by Artifex Software for inclusion in closed-source products.

Ghostscript provides:

• - An interpreter for the PostScript (TM) language, with the ability to convert PostScript language files to many raster formats, view them on displays, and print them on printers that don't have PostScript language capability built in;
• An interpreter for Portable Document Format (PDF) files, with the same abilities;
• The ability to convert PostScript language files to PDF (with some limitations) and vice versa; and
• A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library) that implement the graphics and filtering (data compression / decompression / conversion) capabilities that appear as primitive operations in the PostScript language and in PDF.

Ghostscript is written entirely in C, with special care taken to make it run properly on a wide variety of systems, including MS Windows, Apple MacOS, the wide variety of Unix and Unix-like platforms and VMS systems.