Installing Ghostscript PDF printer

Introduction

A 3rd party "PDF print" tool needs to be installed on the fw Server app host machine until version 6.4 on Windows and version 6.5 on Mac (Linux still pending but on the road map), in order to facilitate "Server-side PDF printing" used by various functionality.

A 3rd party "PDF" print tool can also be helpful to be installed on fw Client app side for local PDF printing.

Since v6.5 on Windows and v6.6 on Mac there is no-longer any need to manually install a 3rd party PDF print tool, as with these versions we've bundled in this Ghostscript PDF printer fw Server & fw Client side and it will get automatically installed.

We recommend using "Ghostscript PDF" virtual PDF printer, as we have verified that it's the most stable to use with the farmerswife Server app. And we've bundled it in as per above info. 

The Ghostscript software and the Multi File Port Monitor that are needed are open source, so there is no cost in using it.

Prerequisites

• gs921w64.exe or gs921w32.exe downloaded from https://www.ghostscript.com/download/gsdnld.html
• mfilemon-setup.exe downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/projects/mfilemon/

Note: If you download a Ghostscript version later than 9.21 that's fine - but you need to know what version it is in order to be able to set up "mfilemon" properly.

Pre-Installation Steps on Windows

1. Install ghostscript - Running as Administrator, install ghostscript by running the exe. This creates folder whose name incorporates the version number, e.g. C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.27
2. Install mfilemon - Run the mfilemon-setup.exe installer.

Installation Steps

1. From the Control Panel, open the Devices and Printers window and click "Add a device".
2. Click "The printer that I want isn't listed".
   
   
   
   
3. Select the "Add a local printer or network printer with manual settings" radio-button and click [ Next ]:
   
   
   
   
4. Select the "Create a new port" radio-button and choose "Multi File Port Monitor" from the drop down menu. Click [ Next ]:
   
   
   
   
5. A small dialog will appear asking you to give a name to the new instance of the Multi File Port Monitor. Give the new port the name "MFP1:" and confirm the dialog with [ OK ]:
   
   
   
   
6. The larger MFILEMON port configuration dialog will appear, and all its fields will be blank. Fill-in the fields using this screenshot as a guide:
   
   
   
   Output path should be an existing writable folder - e.g. use C:\WIFE_ServerSide_PDF
   Filename pattern file%i.pdf - the created PDFs will have names as: file0001.pdf, file0002.pdf, etc.
   User command"C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.27\bin\gswin64c.exe" -dBATCH -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -dAutoRotatePages=/PageByPage -r600 -sOutputFile="%f" -  Note how the version number 9.27 appears in the executable file path. Also note that the command ends with an important trailing hyphen.
   Use pipe to send data to user command leave it checked.
   Leave the other fields at their default settings.
   Click [ OK ]
   
   
7. The Add Printer dialog will reappear again. Click [ Have Disk... ]
   
   
   
   
8. The Install From Disk dialog appears - Click [ Browse ], navigate to C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.27\lib and select ghostpdf.inf
   
   
   
   Note: Earlier versions of the Ghostscript driver were not accompanied by a signed cat file, so the Add Printer wizard would warn that the driver was unsigned. This problem is fixed at Ghostscript v9.21 and later.
   
   
9. You should be able to click through all the other dialogue windows in the Add Printer Wizard.
   
   
10. Try a printer Test Page and then check to see that a pdf file has been created in your designated folder.