PostScript Preview

Preview PostScript and EPS files without leaving Visual Studio Code.

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Quick start

1. Install PostScript Preview from the Visual Studio Marketplace or Open VSX.
2. Install Ghostscript and Poppler for your operating system.
3. Open a .ps or .eps file in Visual Studio Code.
4. Select the preview icon in the editor title bar.

The Visual Studio Marketplace installs the companion PostScript Language extension automatically so Visual Studio Code can recognize PostScript files. Open VSX does not currently mirror that dependency; Open VSX and VSCodium users must first download its VSIX and run Extensions: Install from VSIX....

Highlights

Requirements

PostScript Preview delegates document conversion to three command-line tools:

macOS

Install both dependencies with Homebrew:

brew install ghostscript poppler

Ubuntu and Debian

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ghostscript poppler-utils -y

Windows

Install Ghostscript with Chocolatey from an Administrator terminal:

choco install ghostscript -y

Download the latest prebuilt Poppler archive from poppler-windows, then extract it to C:\Program Files\poppler. The Chocolatey poppler package does not currently include a complete set of working Windows binaries, so the release archive is the recommended source.

Add the installed tools to the system PATH (the command detects the installed Ghostscript version):

$gs = (Get-ChildItem "C:\Program Files\gs\gs*\bin\gswin64c.exe" | Select-Object -Last 1).Directory.Parent.FullName
$popplerBin = (Get-ChildItem "C:\Program Files\poppler" -Filter pdftocairo.exe -Recurse | Select-Object -First 1).DirectoryName
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine) + ";$gs\lib;$gs\bin;$popplerBin", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Restart Visual Studio Code after installation.

If automatic PATH setup does not work, add these directories through System Properties → Environment Variables, replacing <version> with the installed Ghostscript version:

C:\Program Files\gs\gs<version>\lib
C:\Program Files\gs\gs<version>\bin
C:\Program Files\poppler\poppler-<version>\Library\bin

Configuration

Custom paths are useful for Conda environments and other non-standard installations. Open Visual Studio Code settings and search for PostScript Preview, or add the values directly to settings.json.

{
  "postscript-preview.path.ps2pdf": "/opt/ghostscript/bin/ps2pdf",
  "postscript-preview.path.pdftocairo": "/opt/poppler/bin/pdftocairo",
  "postscript-preview.path.pdfinfo": "/opt/poppler/bin/pdfinfo"
}

Using the preview

Multi-page documents

Navigation controls appear when a PostScript document contains multiple pages:

• Select ◀ or ▶ to move one page at a time.
• Enter a page number to jump directly to it.
• Save the source file to regenerate the document and return to page 1.

Console output

To inspect Ghostscript output:

1. Open the Output panel with Ctrl+Shift+U on Windows or Linux, or Cmd+Shift+U on macOS.
2. Select PostScript-Preview from the channel list.
3. Save or reopen the preview to run the converter.

Troubleshooting

If the problem continues, open an issue with your operating system, extension version, and the PostScript-Preview output.

Development

git clone https://github.com/ahnafnafee/PostScript-Preview.git
cd PostScript-Preview
corepack enable
yarn install
yarn compile

Press F5 in Visual Studio Code to open an Extension Development Host.

Tests

See the testing guide for prerequisites, sample documents, and manual checks.

Credits

• mkvoya/eps-preview — the original extension on which this project was based.
• svg-pan-zoom — SVG pan and zoom controls.
• Pickr — the preview background color picker.

License

PostScript Preview is available under the MIT License.

If PostScript Preview is useful to you, consider starring the repository or leaving a review on the Visual Studio Marketplace.