Viewing .ps files with google chrome?

Question

I wonder if there is a way to view .ps files without downloading/saving them while one using the Google chrome?

Such questions belong to http://superuser.com. And there is currently no public way of viewing Postscript files in Chrome. — Rob W, Jan 16 '15 at 22:51
I suggest to keep it around. Even the confirmation that Postscript files cannot be displayed in Google Chrome may be useful to some (this question is already ranked at the top in Google's search results for this question). — Rob W, Jan 16 '15 at 22:54
By the way, do you have an immediate need for this feature, or is it just a hypothetical question? — Rob W, Jan 16 '15 at 23:16
it is just annoying when I come across ps files (which is not frequent). — math137, Jan 16 '15 at 23:17
Same for me, mainly old research documents. Are you any good at creating artwork/icons? If someone wants to desing a decent-looking icon, then I'm willing to develop and upload an extension to the Chrome Web Store for viewing PostScript files. Ssee my profile for my email address if you want to discuss this further. — Rob W, Jan 16 '15 at 23:23
that is good, thank you. I am only drawing some diagrams for my research, using xfig. — math137, Jan 16 '15 at 23:30

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 08 '17 at 02:36

There is currently no way to view .ps (PostScript) files in Google Chrome.

I can imagine two ways to get the desired result though:

Convert the postscript file to PDF with some third-party utility and use Chrome's built-in PDF Viewer (or the PDF.js PDF Viewer Chrome extension) to display the PDF file. (this is relatively easy and can be implemented as a Chrome extension)
Implement a PostScript parser, and integrate it in PDF.js.
- Specification: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf
- Limited proof of concept: http://logand.com/sw/wps/
- Feature request on PDF.js issue tracker: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues/1594 (this is closed, but if you deliver a high-quality patch, the patch may be accepted).

Try the following ps to pdf converter (free for personal use): http://rampantlogic.com/psview/index.html — bardo, Dec 31 '15 at 15:45

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 27 '19 at 20:28

4

I compiled GhostScript 9.26 in Web Assembly and wrote a small wrapper to allow direct display of PostScript files in Chrome. You can find it here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ps-wasm/ebpiondkhkldijolgmhfenknngkkjola

answered Feb 27 '19 at 20:28

Ocha

41
2

The source code for the extension: https://github.com/ochachacha/ps-wasm – moonasteroid Aug 15 '22 at 05:15

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 08 '18 at 11:35

You may try to use another open source browser. For example, the 2018_12 up-to-date openSUSE package collection version of the

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

opens the .ps file in an external program in 2 clicks:

click displays the ps-file as "source code"
the "source code" view has a button titled "Open in External Program..." and after clicking that button the default .ps viewer application is launched.

At the time of the writing of this comment, the SeaMonkey web browser also supports the various old-school Java applets. A page with a Java applet:

http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xSortLab/

The SeaMonkey also has a WYSIWYG-HTML-Editor, which unfortunately generates the pre-HTML5 HTML, but for users with non-IT-background it can still be very helpful as a static web site based document creation tool.

Thank You for reading my comment.

Viewing .ps files with google chrome?

3 Answers3