LASER

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated:
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NAME

laser - laser printer preprocessor

SYNTAX

laser [ -{options} ] [ file ] ...

DESCRIPTION

Laser causes the files to be queued for printing on the laser printer. If no files are named, the standard input is read. Actually Laser really only prepends the proper codes to set up the printer then feeds the output to the system line printer spooler for further processing and spooling.

Laser Command Options:
c num: Character Set where num is in the range of 1 to 18. The numbers have the following meanings:
1   Roman-8          2   USASCII         3   Roman Ext
4   Danish/Norwegian 5   United Kingdom  6   French
7   German           8   Italian         9   Swedish
10  Spanish          11  Legal           12  Linedraw
13  Math8            14  Math8a          15  Math8b
16  Math7            17  PiFont          18  PiFonta
o [ P or L ]: Orientation, portrait or landscape.
t num: Typeface selection should be between the range of 1 to 10. The numbers have the following meanings:
1   Courier          2   Line Printer   3   Helvetica
4   Times Roman      5   Prestige Elite 6   Gothic
7   Pica             8   Script         9   Caslon
10  Orator
h num: Point size which can be selected with a number between 1 and 6. The numbers have the following meanings:
1 7 Pt. 2 8 Pt. 3 8.5 Pt.
4 10 Pt. 5 12 Pt. 6 14.4 Pt.
p num: Pitch selection can be either 1) 10cpi 2) 12cpi, or 3) 16.66cpi.
s [ P or L ]: Spacing, proportional or fixed.
l num: Lines per inch, valid values are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, etc.
i: Italic, turns on italic mode for entire document.
b: Bold, turns on bold mode for entire document.
O num: Offset from column zero. Values can be any positive integer less than eighty.
P num: Pagestep, this is the number of lines that are needed to force the printer to handle standard size sheets of paper. This option is hardwired in at eight lines. The option is provided so that you can disable this feature.
F num: Forms length, this is the size (number of lines) of the paper. Default values for both portrait and landscape sheets are 66 and 54 respectfully.
w: Tells laser to send the output to the standard output so that it can be piped to another process or directed to another device.

It is also possible and probably advisable to simply select a typeface and maybe a left margin offset value and let the rest of the options run at their default values for the typeface selected.

AUTHOR

Ron Flax