TEXTPS

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NAME

textps - convert text file to PostScript

SYNOPSIS

textps [ -h ] [ -v ] [ -c charset ] < input > output

DESCRIPTION

textps converts an ordinary text file to PostScript, suitable for printing on a PostScript printer such as the Apple Laserwriter, or viewing with a PostScript previewer such as Preview on the NeXT. Reads from standard input, writes to standard output. textps converts text files to Courier-11, 66 lines to the page, 80 characters to the line. Handles pagination, tabs, line wrap, overstruck characters (via backspace) and overstruck lines (via carriage return). Absorbs ANSI escape sequences without printing them. If the input file is already PostScript, it is simply copied to the output without alteration. textps produces no special effects.

Unlike other "enscriptors", textps handles 8-bit character sets correctly. The default file character set is CP437 on PCs, the NeXT character set on NeXT workstations, and ISO 8859-1 Latin Alphabet 1 elsewhere. Override the default character set with command-line switches. Shift-In/Shift-Out codes (Ctrl-N and Ctrl-O) within the text are also handled correctly, allowing for representation of 8-bit characters in the 7-bit environment, for example in e-mail.

OPTIONS

-h: displays a help message.
-v: produces a page showing the textps program version number and the printer's PostScript version number.
-c: specifies the file's character set. The choices are apple (Apple QuickDraw), cp437 (IBM code page 437), cp850 (IBM code page 850), decmcs (DEC multinational character set), latin1 (ISO Latin Alphabet 1), and next (the NeXT character set). The character set name can be abbreviated as long as you have given enough characters to distinguish it from the others.

EXAMPLES

textps < infile > outfile

textps < infile | lpr

textps -c cp850 < infile > prn

textps -v -c latin1 < infile | lpr

ERRORS

Returns an exit status code of 0 on success, 1 on failure. Fails only if it is invoked with invalid command line options, in which case an error message is printed, along with usage instructions.

BUGS

textps constructs its own internal font, which contains all of the characters of Latin Alphabet 1, plus 32 additional. File characters that don't have equivalents in this font, such as PC line- and box- drawing characters, are approximated with ASCII characters like '+', '-', '|' and 'X'. Characters that cannot be translated are shown as '?'.

Printers with PostScript versions prior to 47.0 might display certain characters as spaces: broken bar, copyright, trade mark, not sign, fractions, superscripts, Y/y-acute, Icelandic Thorn/thorn and Eth/eth. Use the -v option to have the printer display its PostScript version number.

When textps is installed as a print filter, there is no way way to pass options to it. So, for example, you can't tell it to use a different character set. In that case, run textps "manually":

textps -c decmcs < decmcs.txt | lpr

If textps is installed as a print filter, and a file fails to print correctly, run the file through the Transcript pstext program before printing it:

pstext < file | lpr

Note: pstext does not handle 8-bit characters or line wrap.

AUTHOR

Frank da Cruz, Columbia University, July 1991, with help and/or PostScript code from Bur Davis of Adobe.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 04:02:32 GMT, January 16, 2023