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On our PC (under Windows XP there is MiKTeX, and it have been working well for many years. However, several month ago, after installing the latest version (setup from 09/16/2017), dvipdfmx stopped working reporting something like 'it is not win32 application'. It has been appeared that the problem is arisen by mgs.exe (ghostscript for MiKTeX). The first thought was that a 64-bit version of mgs.exe was mistakenly included into 32-bit MiKteX. However, it is appeared not the bug: MiKTeX team says that it is worked under 32-bit Windows 7.

I do know that officially MiKTeX now requires Windows 7 or higher (so, XP is not supported). However. it was perfectly well until the latest update, and even now latex.exe, yap.exe and others still work. So, the question: is it possible to go the problem around within XP?

halfer
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Spectorsky
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1 Answers1

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Without knowing what the actual problem is, its impossible to offer any advice. When quoting errors it is important to quote the exact error message.

"Something like 'it is not win32 application'" is not precise enough.

This is also not a Ghostscript question, because 'mgs.exe' isn't Ghostscript, its clearly a fork of some kind.

My guess is that its the fact you are using an ancient version of Windows, most likely the application is no longer compatible with such an old version, possibly because whoever built it is using a newer version of Visual Studio.

In order to build Ghostscript for Windows XP I think you need to use Visual Studio 2005 or earlier, a more recent version will create an executable that will not run on Windows XP.

The only solution to this would be to build 'mgs.exe' with an older version of Visual Studio, or try the pre-built executable 'gswin32.exe' which is available from the ghostscript.com website in the downloads section. Obviously that's not the same as mgs.exe, but I can't help you with a fork since I have no clue what's been done.

The first thing to try is running 'mgs.exe' from the command line, if that fails to work then its almost certainly because the developer who built it used too recent a version of Visual Studio.

If this is the case then no, you can't fix it within Windows XP, you need to do one of:

1) Upgrade to a newer OS

2) Downgrade your MikTeX and live with the older version until you are prepared to upgrade your OS.

3) Rebuild 'mgs.exe' yourself using an old version of Visual Studio. This could be challenging because I can't find anywhere on the MikTeX website where they make the source files available. I've been to their Github repository and I can't find anything from Ghostscript there either. I'm going to have to contact the developers, they are not using a stock version of Ghostscript, they do not appear to make their revisions available, ansd although they correctly reference Ghostscript as AGPL I cannot see anywhere in the install or their Github repository which lists Artifex as the owner or points to the Artifex website. They also don't copy the Licence or readme files (slapped wrists for them).

I was going to try using the regular Ghostscript instead of the modified version, but I don't have know anything about MikTeX so I have no way of testing whether that works. It looks to me like it probably would, since it appears that MikTeX forks Ghostscript as a process. So copying and renaming the 64-bit Windows version of Ghostscript's binaries would probably work.

As you note, the developers state themselves that they no longer support Windows XP.

halfer
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KenS
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  • KenS, thanks for reply. When launching `msg.exe`, 'msg.exe is not win32 application' is shown. – Spectorsky Jan 07 '18 at 14:54
  • Then its been built in a way which ic incompatible with Windows XP. You either need to upgrade your Windows, downgrade your MikTeX, rebuild mgs.exe yourself (I cannot find a way to do this) using VS 2005 or attempt to use the standard Ghostscript, which is built by us using VS 2005 specifically so that it **will** work with older versions of Windows. Or, of course, complain to the MikTeX developers. – KenS Jan 07 '18 at 15:17
  • KenS, thanks for a quick reply. Some of your advices have been already tried, but something haven't yet. Thanks.. – Spectorsky Jan 07 '18 at 15:37
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    Information form the MikTeX developer suggests that the Ghostscript included in the distribution is, essentially, a vanilla version of Ghostscript. So if you copy gswin64c.exe, and gsdll64.dll from the standard Ghostscript Windows distribution (64-bit) to mgs.exe and mgsdll64.dll in the MiKTeX 'bin' folder then it will probably work. – KenS Jan 07 '18 at 21:21
  • I must be slow today.... The other thing you could do is copy the mgs.exe and mgsdll64.dll from an earlier version of MikTeX. That should work without problems. Obviously if you do that then you will slowly fall behind Ghostscript releases leaving you open to security problems and bugs. But it ought to work. – KenS Jan 08 '18 at 10:41