1 A2PS NAME a2ps - formats an ascii file for printing on a postscript printer SYNOPSIS a2ps [ -#num ] [ -? ] [ -b ] [ -c ] [ -d ] [ -Fnum ] [ -f ] [ -Hstr ] [ -h ] [ -Ifile ] [ -i ] [ -lnum ] [ -m ] [ -n ] [ -n{bcdfHinPprsvw} ] [ -ofile ] [ -p ] [ -r ] [ -s ] [ -tnum ] [ -v ] [ -w ] [ file1 [ [ -Hstr ] file2 ... ] 2 DESCRIPTION a2ps formats each named file for printing in a postscript printer; if no file is given, a2ps reads from the standard input. The output is sent to lpr or to stdout. The format used is nice and compact: normally two pages on each physical page, borders surrounding pages, headers with useful information (page number, printing date, file name or supplied header), line numbering, etc. This is very useful for making archive listings of programs. 2 Options Options offered by a2ps are the following: -? Print usage information. -#num To get multiple copies of output, where num is the number of copies desired of each file named. By default, you get only one copy. -b Force printing binary files. By default, binary files printing is stopped before second page (see -nb option). -c Compact mode for a sequence of files. This option allows the printing of two files in the same sheet: last page of the first file in the left side and first page of the second file in the right side. This option is valid only for landscape mode (two pages per sheet). -d Print the current date and time at the bottom of the page (default option). This option is affected by the no surrounding border and the no header options. -Fnum Changes font size to this value. Default values for font size are 6.8 in landscape mode and 9.0 in portrait mode. Try other sizes if you think that these values are too small (or big). -f Fold lines too large to be printed inside the borders (default option). Max line size depends on format and font size used and whether line numbering has been suppressed. -Htext Use this text instead of the file name in the page headers for printing subsequent files. Additional -H directives can be mixed in with the filenames. Warning: multiple files printed between -H directives will all have the same heading (but will still be printed with independent page numbers). -h Print usage information. -Ifile Use the specified file as the postscript prologue for a2ps. -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. -lnum Set the lines per page for printing. The font size is automatically scaled up to fill in the whole page. This is useful for printing preformatted documents which have a fixed number of lines per page. The scaling of the font size will be suppressed if this option is used with option -fnum. The minimum number of lines per page is set at 40 and maximum is at 160. If a number less than 40 is supplied, scaling will be turned off and a warning message is printed on the terminal. -m Understand UNIX manual output ie: 66 lines per page, no line numbering and possible bolding and underlining sequences. The understanding of bolding and underlining is there by default even if -m is not specified. -n Output lines are preceded by line numbers, numbered sequentially from 1. -nb Don't print binary files (default option). To detect such a file we make use of a very simple heuristic: if the first page of the file contains at less 75% of non-printing characters, it's a binary file. First page is always printed. -nc Don't use compact mode for a sequence of files. The beginning of each file will be printed in a new sheet. -nd Don't print the current date and time in the footer. -nf Truncate lines too large (don't fold). -nH Don't print page headers. -ni Don't interpret TAB, BS and FF characters. They will be printed according to -v option. -nn Don't number output lines (default option). -np Don't print pages in portrait mode (see -p option) but in landscape mode. -nr Sheet numbering (see -r option) must be continue for all files (don't reset on new file). -ns Don't print page surrounding borders. -nv Replace non-printing characters by a space. -nw Don't use wide format (see -w option). -ofile Send output to named file. -p Print files in portrait mode, one page per physical sheet. The default option is to use landscape mode and print two pages on a physical sheet. This option may not be used with the -w option. -r Reset sheet numbering for each new file (default option). Sheet numbering is used to number physical pages (sheets) as they are printed. Page numbering numbers the logical pages, of which there are usually two per physical page (i.e. unless -p or -w is specified). -s Print page surrounding borders (default option). -tnum Set TAB size to num (default 8). This option is ignored if -ni is specified (see below). -v Replace non-printing characters so that they are visible and easy to identify (default option). Control characters (ascii codes lower than 0x20) are printed like ^X for ctrl-x; the delete character (hex 0x3f) is printed as ^?. Non ascii characters (with the high bit set) are printed as M- (for meta) followed by the character of the low 7 bits. TAB, BS and FF are handled like non-printing characters if -ni option was taken. -w Use wide format pages. This will result in only one page per physical sheet but in landscape mode. This option may not be used with the -p option. 2 USAGE a2ps generates postcript to its standard output. The user could redirect this output to a file, pipe it directly to a print command (like lpr), or to another filter for further processing. a2ps -nP -ofile2 file1 pipe a2ps -nP -p file1 | psnup -n4 | lpr -l -Pps Don't forget -l option in lpr , if you want that lpr interprets your postscript program rather than merely printing it as ascii text. This filter must be used only with text files. Avoid specially output from TeX, troff or any other such text formatters. 2 SEE ALSO tgrind(1) lpr(1) 2 AUTHORS Evan Kirshenbaum (evan@csli) for the initial version. Miguel Santana (miguel@imag.imag.fr) for versions 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. 2 CONTRIBUTORS Oscar Nierstrasz (oscar@cui.uucp) Tim Clark (T.Clark@warwick.ac.uk) Henk Tullemans (tullemans@apolloway.prl.philips.nl) Johan Vromans (jv@mh.nl) Craig Stevenson (craig.r.stevenson@att.com) John Macdonald (jmm@eci386.uucp) Huub van de Wetering (wstahw@lso.win.tue.nl) Michael Lemke (ai26@a400.sternwarte.uni-erlangen.de)