When I open *.eps and *.ps files using KGhostView they always appear squished in the horizontal axis or, if you prefer, stretched vertically. Some other facts:

1. When I use ps2pdf to convert the doc the pdf looks great.

2. I have orientation and paper size both set to 'auto' in KGhostView, and picking other settings at random does not cure the ill.

3. This problem affects all postscripts that I've ever tried to open. When I open the same files in Windows XP they look fine - not corrupted.

4. I used to have a similar problem in gv but changing from "Natural Size" to "Pixel-Based" in gv fixed it. I can now view the eps file as it is supposed to look...but only in gv, not KGhostView. I can't find any similar options in the menus of KGhostView. Does anyone know how to change that option in KGhostView?

5. I'm running on a widescreen hp laptop (pavilion zt3340us).

BTW, the thumbnails in Konquerer also look good but when the file opens w/ KGhostView in the Konquerer window, it's distorted. Thanks in advance for any help you can lend!

OS: Linux 2.6.22.5-31-default i686
System: openSUSE 10.3 (i586)
KDE: 3.5.7 "release 72.9"
Display Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
Model: RV250 Lf
Driver: radeon (3D Support)

Try typing the following command:
xdpyinfo | grep resolution
if the resolution is ok, you should obtain something like:
"resolution: 106x106 dots per inch"
with the same value for both axis. If that's not the case, you have to change something in the xorg.conf, I think you should act on the "DisplaySize" value in the monitor section.

Thanks for your suggestion. Here is the result of the command that you mentioned:

> xdpyinfo | grep resolution
resolution: 49x98 dots per inch

And my "Monitor" entry in xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"
DisplaySize 662 207
HorizSync 29-62
Identifier "Monitor[0]"
ModelName "LCD MONITOR"
Option "DPMS"
VendorName "LGP"
VertRefresh 43-60
UseModes "Modes[0]"
EndSection

what values should I use for DisplaySize?

Another forum mentioned that the "DisplaySize" value is the physical size of your screen in mm. I could have gotten the value by multiplying the resolution by the pixel size in mm but I'm too lazy to find out those things. I just commented out the "DisplaySize" line and now I have: "resolution: 75x75 dots per inch" and everything works great in all ps viewers! I had to adjust some font sizes but no big deal. Thanks so much for your help, this has been pestering me for a long long time

I started having troubles getting fonts to look the right size in all of my programs at once so I went back and did it the right way. I found my dot pitch value (0.259 mm) on Wikipedia's "Dot Pitch" page and changed my "DisplaySize" value to 331 207. This is the result of my screen res (1280x800) multiplied by the dot pitch. Apparently the automatically determined number in xorg.conf mistakenly multiplied the x-axis value by 2. Now I get 98x98 dpi instead of 75x75 - sweet!

I simply measured my laptop's screen with a metric ruler.

of course I did that at first too but my nerd-core needed to do it the mathy way.

One has to feed the nerd-core. It also like copious quantities of Dr. Pepper.