paps - Man Page

paps [options] files...

paps reads an input file and writes a PostScript language or user specified format rendering of the file to standard output. paps accepts international text in any locale and provides internationalized text layout including text shaping and bidirectional text rendering.

If no filename argument is provided, paps reads the standard input. If the standard input is a terminal, input is terminated by an EOF signal, usually Control-d.

paps follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below.

-h, --help

Show summary of options.

--landscape

Landscape output. Default is portrait.

--columns=cl

Format output into cl columns. Default is 1.
Please notice this option isn't related to the terminal length as in a "80 columns terminal".

--font=desc

Use font based on description desc. Default is "Monospace 12". The format of the string representation is:

"[family-list] [style-options] [size]"

where family-list is a comma separated list of families optionally terminated by a comma, style-options is a whitespace separated list of words where each word describes one of style, variant, weight, or stretch, and size is a decimal number for size in points, e.g. "Courier,Monospace Bold Italic 10".

-o, --output=file

Output file. Default is stdout. Output format is set based on file's extension when --format is not provided.

--rtl

Do right-to-left (RTL) text layout and align text to the right. Text direction is detected automatically. Use this option for explicit RTL layout and right alignment.

--justify

Justify the layout. Stretch complete lines to fill the entire width.

--wrap=wm

Use line wrapping mode wm. Default is word-char.

word

Wrap lines at word boundaries

char

Wrap lines at character boundaries

word-char

Wrap lines at word boundaries, but fall back to character boundaries if there is not enough space for a full word

--show-wrap

Mark wrapped lines with special characters.

--paper=ps

Choose paper size. Accepted paper sizes are 'legal', 'letter', 'A3' and 'A4'. Default is A4.

--gravity=gr

Set base glyph orientation. Default is auto.

south

Glyphs stand upright

east

Glyphs are rotated 90 degrees clockwise

north

Glyphs are upside-down

west

Glyphs are rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise

auto

Gravity is resolved from the context

--gravity-hint=gh

Set how horizontal scripts behave in a vertical context. Default is natural.

natural

Scripts will take their natural gravity based on the base gravity and the script

strong

Always use the base gravity, regardless of the script

line

For scripts not in their natural direction (e.g. Latin in East gravity), choose per-script gravity such that every script respects the line progression. This means, Latin and Arabic will take opposite gravities and both flow top-to-bottom for example.

--format=fmt

Choose output format. Default is ps.

ps

PostScript

pdf

Portable Document Format

svg

Scalable Vector Graphics

Postscript points

Each postscript point equals to 1/72 of an inch. 36 points are 1/2 of an inch.

--bottom-margin=bm

Set bottom margin. Default is 36 postscript points.

--top-margin=tm

Set top margin. Default is 36 postscript points.

--left-margin=lm

Set left margin. Default is 36 postscript points.

--right-margin=rm

Set right margin. Default is 36 postscript points.

--gutter-width=gw

Set gutter width. Default is 40 postscript points.

--header

Draw page header with document name, date and page number for each page. Header is not printed by default.

--header-left=fmt

Sets the formatting for the left side of the header. See FORMAT for an explanation of the header and footer formatting. Default is the current localized date.

--header-center=fmt

Sets the formatting for the center of the header. See FORMAT for an explanation of the header and footer formatting. Default is the filename.

--header-right=fmt

Sets the formatting for the center of the header. See FORMAT for an explanation of the header and footer formatting. Default is the Page number.

--footer

Draw page footer with document name, date and page number for each page. Footer is not printed by default.

--footer-left=fmt

Sets the formatting for the left side of the footer. See FORMAT for an explanation of the footer and footer formatting. The default formatting is an empty string.

--footer-center=fmt

Sets the formatting for the center of the footer. See FORMAT for an explanation of the footer and footer formatting. The default formatting is an empty string.

--footer-right=fmt

Sets the formatting for the center of the footer. See FORMAT for an explanation of the footer and footer formatting. The default formatting is an empty string.

--title="text"

Use text as the title string for page header. By default the input filename or "stdin" is used.

--markup

Interpret input as pango markup. Pango Text Attribute Markup Language allows marking parts of the text with tags defining additional attributes such as font face, size, weight, colors or text decoration such as underline or strikethrough.

--encoding=enc

Assume encoding of the input text is enc. By default the encoding of the current locale is used (e.g. UTF-8).

--lpi=lines

Set number of lines per inch. This determines the line spacing.

--cpi=chars

Set number of characters per inch. This is an alternative method of specifying the font size.

--g-fatal-warnings

Make all glib warnings fatal.

The following exit values are returned:

0

Successful completion.

1

An error occurred.

The header and footers may be formatted by a mini language based on the python f-strings. Text outside of squiggly brackets are entered literally in the output. Text inside squiggly brackets contain one of the following predefined list of variables:

now

mtime

page_idx

num_pages

filename

path

Example 1 Printing UTF-8 text file

The following command can be used to print a file in any of the UTF-8 based locales if the file is in UTF-8 or compatible codeset.

$ paps en_US_UTF-8.txt

By default paps will print PostScript rendering to standard output. Send the output to a printer using lp

$ paps en_US_UTF-8.txt | lp

or to a file using redirection or the -o option

$ paps en_US_UTF-8.txt > out.ps
$ paps -o out.ps en_US_UTF-8.txt

Example 2 Specify encoding

To print a file in specific encoding regardless of the current locale setting use the --encoding option. An example for Japanese EUC encoded input file:

$ paps --encoding eucjp ja_JP_eucjp.txt > out.ps

paps will still use current locale setting to prioritize the available fonts for current language.

Example 3 Specify locale

Override the LC_ALL environment variable to run paps in a different locale.

$ LC_ALL=ja_JP.eucjp paps ja_JP_eucjp.txt > out.ps

Here paps will assume the input is in Japanese EUC encoding and will use Japanese eucjp locale to render the output. If --header is added, the date is printed in Japanese.

Example 4 Change the header and footer

Override the header and the footer to show only the page in the middle of the footer.

$ paps --separation-lines -o /tmp/foo.pdf --header --header-left='' \
 --header-center='{path}' --header-right='' --footer \
 --footer-left='Printed {now:%c}' \
 --footer-right='Page {page_idx}/{num_pages}' \
 `pwd`/paps.ccx

Here paps will assume the input is in Japanese EUC encoding and will use Japanese eucjp locale to render the output. If --header is added, the date is printed in Japanese.

paps uses locale environment variables to determine its behavior. The following categories are used:

LC_CTYPE

to assume the encoding of the input. This can be overridden by --encoding.

LC_TIME

to format the date for header.

Font selection is also affected by current locale. Example 3 describes how to run paps in a different locale.

fc-match(1), setlocale(3C)

paps was written by Dov Grobgeld <dov.grobgeld@gmail.com>.

This manual page was written by Lior Kaplan <kaplan@debian.org>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).