Some background on gle

        I have used version 3.3b of the early 90's vintage for many years, in both DOS and UNIX. Regrettably advances in software/hardware have made it creak a little, and below I originally described some stops in my turn of the century quest for the perfect gle.  I've found that many of the original links are dead, and have tried to update where possible:

       

  • The original Chris Pugmire version can still be found, but you have to search for it, as many older repositories of programs are dying out/changing.
  • Extension to 32bit operation by Axel Rohde as version 3.3h was for a long time available from University of Duesseldorf. Regrettably I did not manage to get this to work satisfactorily, but admittedly I didn't try very hard. Successful installation promised a wide selection of SVGA modes for the preview screen
  • Recompilation of version 3.3h which works well enough in the win95+ world was found by me on the web in the mid 90's and combined with the Rohde version. Note that the mouse does exist in preview mode, but it is activated by pressing the appropriate keyboard key for line or text placement. Previewing is also limited to standard VGA. This version is now available as gle-3.3h-bin-windows.zip on the glx.sourceforge.net site.
  • An interesting Delphi port for W95+/NT by Derek Ingram is available from http://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/people/dgi/ in the file glefix2.zip. The program is called gle2000 - I've only given it a short glance and it works, but it is not 100% compatible with the old gle syntax and it does tend to crash a lot. It also appears to be receiving no further development or support.
  • There has been further development of gle by Vincent LaBella to version 3.5, which was an enhanced version of psgle.
  • Development of gle is being continued as a SourceForge project, currently in version gle 4. Jan Struyff deals with most issues associated with development and packaging, while Al Budden is developing a ghostscript based previewer with some online drawing features, which is called qgle.

        gle 4 is available from Sourceforge and through its org alias. The package has already been through many subversions and offers hassle free installation of a compiled executable for Windows, as well as source code for Windows or Unix compilation. The Sourceforge site also offers gle related information and downloads, including manuals in the "Support & Docs" section of its website. Older versions of gle are available in the "Downloads" section of the glx.sourceforge.net site, which is currently the central site for gle downloads and gle related links.

       

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