what is ghostscript

Ghostscript is a suite of software that includes an interpreter for the PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, for the display or printing of document pages, and the conversion between PostScript and PDF files. Ghostscript can be used as a raster image processor (RIP) for raster computer printers, as an input filter of line printer daemon, or as the RIP engine behind PostScript and PDF viewers. It can also be used as a file format converter, such as PostScript to PDF converter. Ghostscript is available under either the GNU GPL Affero license or licensed for commercial use from Artifex Software, Inc.