MGv is essentially a Motif version of the Ghostview PostScript viewer; in fact, the Ghostview widget and the DSC parser in MGv are the same as the ones in Ghostview (with minor tweaks). The two programs are almost identical in terms of features but MGv has nicer zooming (inspired by Ghostview-VMS), an HTML based on-line help system, a nicer Motif user interface, and rudimentary support for PDF files (if your Ghostscript can deal with PDF). As of version 2.0, MGv also supports multiple top level windows, viewing of compressed/gzipped files, scrolling with automatic page changes, arbitrary magsteps (up to the limits of your memory of course), and smooth scrolling. MGv is almost a complete re-write, the only things from Ghostview are the Ghostview widget and the DSC parser and even these have been modified to suit my needs.
This project started out as a test bed for the widget tree creation ideas in wlib and then became a playpen for learning more about Xt and Motif. Along the way MGv became a useful program so I decided to release it for others to use. I still consider MGv a playground for learning and trying new things with Xt and Motif but since I view a lot of PostScript documents, I will do my best to keep MGv free of bugs.
Parts of this document were extracted from the documentation supplied
with Ghostview version 1.5; in particular,
The Interface to Ghostscript is essentially
the contents of the gs.interface file from Ghostview 1.5.
The documentation for MGv is available in PostScript (mgv.ps and
mgv-a4.ps), HTML (mgv*.html), and ASCII text (mgv.txt) formats.
Executing MGv is very simple:
mgv [switches] [file.ps [...]]
If you mention multiple files on the command line, MGv will attempt to
open each file in its own window (so be careful with
"mgv *.ps").
If no initial file is specified, MGv will try and read from the standard
input if it looks like there is something there; see the
Reading From The Standard Input section for details.
The available switches are detailed in the
Command Line Switches section.