a2ps - formats an ascii file for printing on a postscript
printer
SYNOPSIS
a2ps [ global options ] [ positional options ] [ file1 [ [
positional options ] ] file2 ... ]
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 phys-
ical page, borders surrounding pages, headers with useful
information (page number, printing date, file name or sup-
plied header), line numbering, etc. This is very useful
for making archive listings of programs.
Global options offered by a2ps are the following:
-? Print usage information.
-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 physi-
cal page: last page of the first file in the left
(or up) side and first page of the second file in
the right (or down) side. This option is valid only
for twinpage mode (two pages per physical page).
-f Fold lines too large to be printed inside the bor-
ders (default option). Max line size depends on
format and font size used and whether line numbering
has been suppressed.
-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.
-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.
beginning of each file will be printed in a new
physical page.
-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.
-nP Send output to stdout. Default is to send output
directly to the printer
-nr Sheet numbering (see -r option) must be continue for
all files (don't reset on new file). Default option.
-nv Replace non-printing characters by a space.
-n8 Don't print non ascii characters as ISO Latin 1
characters (see -8 option).
-Pprinter
Send output to the named printer. The default option
is send to the default printer.
-r Reset sheet numbering for each new file. Sheet num-
bering is used to number physical pages (sheets) as
they are printed. Page numbering numbers the logi-
cal pages, of which there are usually two per physi-
cal page (i.e. unless -p or -w is specified).
-s1 Print output in one-sided mode (only one side of
each sheet). The default option depends on the
installation.
-s2 Print output in two-sided mode (front and backside
of each sheet). Default option depends on the
installation.
-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). Con-
trol 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.
acters are printed as M- (for meta) followed by the
character of the low 7 bits.
Positional options are applied to all files that will be
found in the rest of the command line. The -H option is
the only exception: it is applied only to the next file.
Positional options offered by a2ps are the following:
-1 Print only one page per physical page (single page
mode).
-2 Print two pages per physical page (twinpage mode),
side by side or up-down, depending on the printing
mode (landscape or portrait).
-#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.
-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, 6.4 in twinpage
portrait mode and 9.0 in single page portrait mode.
Try other sizes if you think that these values are
too small (or big).
-B Print using bold font.
-Htext
Use this text instead of the file name in the page
headers for printing next (and only next) file.
Additional -H directives can be mixed in with the
filenames.
-l Print files in landscape mode (default option). This
option may not be used with the -p option.
-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 docu-
ments 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, scal-
ing will be turned off and a warning message is
printed on the terminal.
-m Understand UNIX manual output ie: 66 lines per page,
and underlining is there by default even if -m is
not specified.
-n Output lines are preceded by line numbers, numbered
sequentially from 1.
-nd Don't print the current date and time in the footer.
-nn Don't number output lines (default option).
-ns Don't print page surrounding borders.
-nB Don't print using bold font.
-nu Don't print filename at bottom of page. Default is
to print the filename, centered, at the bottom of
the page.
-nL Don't print user login ID at top of page. Default is
to print the user's login ID in the upper right cor-
ner of the page. (available for Unix systems only)
-p Print files in portrait mode (horizontal pages).
The default option is to use landscape mode.
-s Print page surrounding borders (default option).
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 fur-
ther processing. By default, a2ps pipes directly the out-
put to the print command (see -P option).
a2ps -nP file1 > file2
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 spe-
cially output from TeX, troff or any other such text for-
matters.
SEE ALSO
lpr(1)
AUTHORS
Evan Kirshenbaum (evan@csli) for the initial version.
Miguel Santana (M.Santana@frgu.bull.fr) for versions 1.0,
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)
erikt@cs.umu.se
wstahw@lso.win.tue.nl
mai@wolfen.cc.uow.oz
Johan Garpendahl (garp@isy.liu.se)
John Interrante (interran@uluru.stanford.edu)
Larry Barbieri (lbarbieri@ll.mit.edu)
Chris Adamo (adamo@ll.mit.edu)