GSview and Ghostscript

Found in

Desktop publishing and computer graphics editors.

PDF and EPS Conversion

GSview is the graphic front-end for Ghostscript. And what is Ghostscript? It is a PostScript interpreter. And what is PostScript? It's a graphics language. So basically GSview will help you view and convert PDF, EPS, and some AI files. Adobe Illustrator saves many of its files in a format that is PDF-compatible, which means that even if you don't have Illustrator (or a recent version of Illustrator), you can open Adobe Illustrator files with GSview, and export them to another format (such as PDF) for use in Adobe Reader or a vector editing program. It can also be used to convert PDF files that have printing, viewing, or editing restrictions (thus removing these flags and allowing you to use the file normally).

Conclusion

This program is most useful for converting troublesome files or files that you do not have the correct software version to open. For example, if someone were to send you a new Illustrator file and you did not have the latest version, you may be able to open the file in GSview and convert it to another format so that you can edit or save it. This is a very useful feature, but beyond this, GSview's ability to view PDFs is certainly not uncommon.