What does this Ghostscript error message mean?

Question

I get this error message from a Ghostscript call:

Error: /syntaxerror in -file-
Operand stack:

Execution stack:
   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--     2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--
  --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1926   1   3   %oparray_pop   1925   1   3   %oparray_
pop   1909   1   3   %oparray_pop   1803   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   %errorexec_pop   .runexec2   --nostr
ingval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1169/1684(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:77/200(L)--
Current allocation mode is local
Current file position is 215
GPL Ghostscript 9.05: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

Does it mean that there is problem in the input Postscript file or does it mean something is wrong with my call or the installation?

The call was:

ps2pdf book.ps book.pdf

The input file book.ps exists in the current directory.

Is there a list of Ghostscript error messages and what they mean somewhere? (Google was not my friend in this case.)

Answer 1

This is not a Ghostscript error message, its a PostScript error message. The PostScript error messages are defined in the PostScript Language Reference Manual. Syntaxerror means pretty much what it says, the PostScript program contained a syntax error.

Things you can try:

1. Execute Ghostscript on the PostScript file to render the page, does it work ? (You don't say what OS you are suing but something like gs book.ps ought to work)

2. Try using Ghostscript directly instead of the ps2pdf script which merely wraps it. Again something like gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o book.pdf book.ps

One of these may help by either working or giving more explicit errors.