opdvips (1) Linux Manual Page

NAME

dvips – convert a TeX DVI file to PostScript

SYNOPSIS

dvips [ options ] file[.dvi]

DESCRIPTION

THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE! See the Texinfo documentation instead. You can read it either in Emacs or with the standalone info program which comes with the GNU texinfo distribution as prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/texinfo*.tar.gz.

The program dvips takes a DVI file file[.dvi] produced by TeX (or by some other processor such as GFtoDVI) and converts it to PostScript, normally sending the result directly to the (laser)printer. The DVI file may be specified without the .dvi extension. Fonts used may either be resident in the printer or defined as bitmaps in PK files, or a `virtual’ combination of both. If the mktexpk program is installed, dvips will automatically invoke METAFONT to generate fonts that don’t already exist.

For more information, see the Texinfo manual dvips.texi, which should be installed somewhere on your system, hopefully accessible through the standard Info tree.

OPTIONS

-a

Conserve memory by making three passes over the .dvi file instead of two and only loading those characters actually used. Generally only useful on machines with a very limited amount of memory, like some PCs.

-A

Print only odd pages (TeX pages, not sequence pages).

-b num

Generate num copies of each page, but duplicating the page body rather than using the #numcopies option. This can be useful in conjunction with a header file setting op-hook to do color separations or other neat tricks.

-B

Print only even pages (TeX pages, not sequence pages).

-c num

Generate num copies of every page. Default is 1. (For collated copies, see the -C option below.)

-C num

Create num copies, but collated (by replicating the data in the PostScript file). Slower than the -c option, but easier on the hands, and faster than resubmitting the same PostScript file multiple times.

-d num

Set the debug flags. This is intended only for emergencies or for unusual fact-finding expeditions; it will work only if dvips has been compiled with the DEBUG option. If nonzero, prints additional information on standard error. The number is taken as a set of independent bits. The meaning of each bit follows. 1=specials; 2=paths; 4=fonts; 8=pages; 16=headers; 32=font compression; 64=files; 128=memory; 256=Kpathsea stat(2) calls; 512=Kpathsea hash table lookups; 1024=Kpathsea path element expansion; 2048=Kpathsea searches. To trace everything having to do with file searching and opening, use 3650 (2048 + 1024 + 512 + 64 + 2). To track all classes, you can use `-1′ (output is extremely voluminous).

-D num

Set the resolution in dpi (dots per inch) to num. This affects the choice of bitmap fonts that are loaded and also the positioning of letters in resident PostScript fonts. Must be between 10 and 10000. This affects both the horizontal and vertical resolution. If a high resolution (something greater than 400 dpi, say) is selected, the -Z flag should probably also be used.

-e num

Make sure that each character is placed at most this many pixels from its `true’ resolution-independent position on the page. The default value of this parameter is resolution dependent. Allowing individual characters to `drift’ from their correctly rounded positions by a few pixels, while regaining the true position at the beginning of each new word, improves the spacing of letters in words.

-E

makes dvips attempt to generate an EPSF file with a tight bounding box. This only works on one-page files, and it only looks at marks made by characters and rules, not by any included graphics. In addition, it gets the glyph metrics from the tfm file, so characters that lie outside their enclosing tfm box may confuse it. In addition, the bounding box might be a bit too loose if the character glyph has significant left or right side bearings. Nonetheless, this option works well for creating small EPSF files for equations or tables or the like. (Note, of course, that dvips output is resolution dependent and thus does not make very good EPSF files, especially if the images are to be scaled; use these EPSF files with a great deal of care.)

-f

Run as a filter. Read the .dvi file from standard input and write the PostScript to standard output. The standard input must be seekable, so it cannot be a pipe. If you must use a pipe, write a shell script that copies the pipe output to a temporary file and then points dvips at this file. This option also disables the automatic reading of the PRINTER environment variable, and turns off the automatic sending of control D if it was turned on with the -F option or in the configuration file; use -F after this option if you want both.

-F

Causes Control-D (ASCII code 4) to be appended as the very last character of the PostScript file. This is useful when dvips is driving the printer directly instead of working through a spooler, as is common on extremely small systems. NOTE! DO NOT USE THIS OPTION!

-G

Causes dvips to shift non-printing characters to higher-numbered positions. This may be useful sometimes.

-h name

Prepend file name as an additional header file. (However, if the name is simply `-‘ suppress all header files from the output.) This header file gets added to the PostScript userdict.

-i

Make each section be a separate file. Under certain circumstances, dvips will split the document up into `sections’ to be processed independently; this is most often done for memory reasons. Using this option tells dvips to place each section into a separate file; the new file names are created replacing the suffix of the supplied output file name by a three-digit sequence number. This option is most often used in conjunction with the -S option which sets the maximum section length in pages. For instance, some phototypesetters cannot print more than ten or so consecutive pages before running out of steam; these options can be used to automatically split a book into ten-page sections, each to its own file.

-j

Download only needed characters from Type 1 fonts. This is the default in the current release. Some debugging flags trace this operation. You can also control partial downloading on a per-font basis, via the psfonts.map file.

-k

Print crop marks. This option increases the paper size (which should be specified, either with a paper size special or with the -T option) by a half inch in each dimension. It translates each page by a quarter inch and draws cross-style crop marks. It is mostly useful with typesetters that can set the page size automatically.

-K

This option causes comments in included PostScript graphics, font files, and headers to be removed. This is sometimes necessary to get around bugs in spoolers or PostScript post-processing programs. Specifically, the %%Page comments, when left in, often cause difficulties. Use of this flag can cause some included graphics to fail, since the PostScript header macros from some software packages read portions of the input stream line by line, searching for a particular comment. This option has been turned off by default because PostScript previewers and spoolers have been getting better.

-l num

The last page printed will be the first one numbered num Default is the last page in the document. If the num is prefixed by an equals sign, then it (and any argument to the -p option) is treated as a sequence number, rather than a value to compare with