MacGhostView 6.1

MacGhostView is a application for previewing Postscript and encapsulated Postscript files and converting them to other formats. It implements the command line tools gv (ghostview 3.7.2) and gs (ghostscript 9.18). Multiple files can be previewed at the same time, each one displayed in its own gv window. Unlike Apple's Preview program, MacGhostView does not convert Postscript files to PDF format and then display the PDF file.

System Requirements

MacGhostView 6.1 runs on any OS X from 10.6 to 10.15 and requires the X11 or XQuartz application. If you have updated to Catalina from a previous version of macOS you may have to reinstall XQuartz 2.7.11.

Downloading

MacGhostView 6.1 is a 50 Mb download and can be downloaded by clicking here. This download includes the gv, xdvi-motif and xpdf tools described below.

Previous versions

MacGhostView 5.2.4 is a 32 bit application and runs under OS X 10.2 - 10.14.
MacGhostView 4.6 does not require X11. It is a PPC program and runs under OS X 10.2 - 10.6.
MacGhostView 3.2 is the last version of MacGhostView that runs on a vintage 68K or Power Mac under OS 7.0.1 through 9.2.2. It also runs under emulation with Basilisk II or SheepShaver.

Terminal based previewers for TeX on OS X

MacGhostview includes three previewers which may be of interest to users of TeX on OS X, namely gv, xdvi-motif and xpdf. All three require a X11 installation and xdvi-motif requires MacTeX 2016 or later.

Gv is simply MacGhostView stripped of everything but the Postscript viewer and is run from the Terminal. You must have a recent version of ghostscript installed in /usr/local. To install gv simply move it to /usr/local/bin and move the man page, gv.1, to /usr/local/share/man/man1. It runs under OS X 10.6 through 10.15.

Xpdf is another PDF viewer for OS X. It does not use Apple's PDFKit for rendering PDF files and thus may display PDF files that do not display correctly under Preview, TeXShop or Skim. To install xpdf simply move xpdf and xpdf-bin to /usr/local/bin and move the man page, xpdf.1, to /usr/local/share/man/man1. Xpdf does not require a ghostscript installation but does use some old style ghostscript fonts. If your system does not have a /usr/local/share/ghostcript/fonts directory, move the fonts folder to the /usr/local/share/ghostscript directory. Xpdf runs under OS X 10.6 through 10.15.

Xdvi-motif is the OpenMotif version of the xdvi program included with MacTeX 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 or 2020. To install it move xdvim and xdvi-motif to /Library/TeX/texbin. To view myfile.dvi with xdvi-motif type xdvim myfile.dvi in a Terminal window. Typing xdvi myfile.dvi will run the standard xdvi program.

These programs are included in the MacGhostView 6.1 download given above.

Last updated: February 2021