A2PS
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 20 Mar 1990
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NAME
a2ps - formats a text file as postscript
SYNOPSIS
a2ps
[
-b
] [
-c
] [
-f num
] [
[
-h
] [
-l num
] [
-i
] [
-l num
] [
-n
] [
-t num
] [
-v
] [
-w
] [
file
] ...
DESCRIPTION
a2ps
formats each named file for printing on a PostScript device;
if no file is given,
a2ps
reads from the standard input.
Previous versions of
a2ps
had all kinds of bells and whistles: 2-up printing, line numbers.
However, this is against the UNIX principle of using filters that do
one job well, so this version does
one logical page per physical page.
It also producing confirming PostScript, enabling you to use
PostScript processing filters on the output.
If you want 2-up printing, filter the output through
up(1).
If you want line numbers, filter the input through
nl(1)
(or
grep(1)
with the -n option if you don't have nl).
A2ps
makes headers with page number,
printing date, and file name.
Actually, this could be handled by
pr(1),
so maybe I should remove the header.
On the other hand, it looks nice, in a separate font.
Options offered by
a2ps
are the following:
- -b
-
Force printing of binary files. By default, binary files printing is
stopped before second page.
- -c
-
Cut lines too large to be printed inside the borders.
Max size depends on format and font size used.
- -f num
-
Changes font size to this value. Default values for font size are
what it takes to get 66 lines per page.
Try other sizes if you think that
this is too small (or big).
- -h
-
Don't print headers.
- -i
-
Interpret TAB, BS and FF characters (default option). TAB is replaced by
enough spaces to reach next tab stop while BS and FF have their meanings.
The backspacing is on purpose not done exactly to achieve a ``poor man's
boldface'' effect with
nroff(1)
output. Each backspace is alternatingly a little bit wider and narrower
than the character cell width.
- -t num
-
Set TAB width to num (default 8).
- -v
-
Replace non-printing characters so that they are visible and easy to identify
(default option). The characters are printed in standard C octal notation.
- -w
-
Print in landscape (wide) mode.
USAGE
A2ps
sends formatted file to standard output. You could redirect this output
to a file, pipe it directly to a print command (like lp), or pipe it to
another filter (like up) for further processing.
a2ps file1 > file2
a2ps file1 | lp -pps
a2ps file1 | up | lp -dps
This filter must be used only with text files. Avoid specially output from
TeX, troff or any other such text formatters.
SEE ALSO
lp(1), up(1)
AUTHORS
Evan Kirshenbaum (evan@csli) for the initial version.
Miguel Santana (miguel@imag.imag.fr) for versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
Tor Lillqvist (tml@tik.vtt.fi) for version 4.0
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- USAGE
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AUTHORS
-
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