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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THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE!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.
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, sending the output to a file or directly
to a 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 \bop-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. For maximum
information, you can use `-1'. See the Dvips Texinfo manual for more details.
-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 \count0 values. Thus, using -l =9 will end with the ninth page of the
document, no matter what the pages are actually numbered. On the other hand, if
num is suffixed by `.SEQ', the SEQth occurrence of num is used; for example, -l
99.2 says to end processing with the second page numbered 99 in the document.
-m Specify manual feed for printer.
-mode mode
Use mode as the Metafont device name for path searching and font generation. This
overrides any value from configuration files. With the default paths, explicitly
specifying the mode also makes the program assume the fonts are in a subdirectory
named mode.
-M Turns off the automatic font generation facility. If any fonts are missing,
commands to generate the fonts are appended to the file missfont.log in the current
directory; this file can then be executed and deleted to create the missing fonts.
-n num At most num pages will be printed. Default is 100000.
-N Turns off structured comments; this might be necessary on some systems that try to
interpret PostScript comments in weird ways, or on some PostScript printers. Old
versions of TranScript in particular cannot handle modern Encapsulated PostScript.
-noomega
This will disable the use of Omega extensions when interpreting DVI files. By
default, the additional opcodes 129 and 134 are recognized by dvips as Omega or
pTeX extensions and interpreted as requests to set 2-byte characters.
-noptex
This will disable the use of pTeX extensions when interpreting DVI files. By
default, the additional opcodes 130 and 135 are recognized by dvips as pTeX
extensions and interpreted as requests to set 3-byte characters, and 255 as request
to change the typesetting direction.
The only drawback is that the virtual font array will (at least temporarily)
require 65536 or more positions instead of the default 256 positions, i.e., the
memory requirements of dvips will be somewhat larger. If you find this
unacceptable or encounter another problem with the Omega or pTeX extensions, you
can switch off the pTeX extension by using -noptex, or both by using -noomega (but
please do send a bug report if you find such problems - see the bug address in the
AUTHORS section below).
-o name
The output will be sent to file name If no file name is given (i.e., -o is last on
the command line), the default name is file.ps where the .dvi file was called
file.dvi; if this option isn't given, any default in the configuration file is
used. If the first character of the supplied output file name is an exclamation
mark, then the remainder will be used as an argument to popen; thus, specifying
!lpr as the output file will automatically queue the file for printing. 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.
-O offset
Move the origin by a certain amount. The offset is a comma-separated pair of
dimensions, such as .1in,-.3cm (in the same syntax used in the papersize special).
The origin of the page is shifted from the default position (of one inch down, one
inch to the right from the upper left corner of the paper) by this amount.
-p num Just like -l but for the first page in the document.
-pp pagelist
A comma-separated list of pages and ranges (a-b) may be given, which will be
interpreted as \count0 values. Pages not specified will not be printed. Multiple
-pp options may be specified or all pages and page ranges can be specified with one
-pp option.
-P printername
Sets up the output for the appropriate printer. This is implemented by reading in
config.printername , which can then set the output pipe (as in, !lpr -Pprintername
as well as the font paths and any other config.ps defaults for that printer only.
Note that config.ps is read before config.printername In addition, another file
called ~/.dvipsrc is searched for immediately after config.ps; this file is
intended for user defaults. If no -P command is given, the environment variable
PRINTER is checked. If that variable exists, and a corresponding configuration
file exists, that configuration file is read in.
-q Run in quiet mode. Don't chatter about pages converted, etc.; report nothing but
errors to standard error.
-r Stack pages in reverse order. Normally, page 1 will be printed first.
-R[0|1|2]
Run securely. -R2 disables both shell command execution in \special'{} (via
backticks ` ) and config files (via the E option), and opening of any absolute
filenames. -R1 , the default, forbids shell escapes but allows absolute filenames.
-R0 allows both. The config file option is z
-s Causes the entire global output to be enclosed in a save/restore pair. This causes
the file to not be truly conformant, and is thus not recommended, but is useful if
you are driving the printer directly and don't care too much about the portability
of the output.
-S num Set the maximum number of pages in each `section'. This option is most commonly
used with the -i option; see that documentation above for more information.
-t papertype
This sets the paper type to papertype. The papertype should be defined in one of
the configuration files, along with the appropriate code to select it. (Currently
known types include letter, legal, ledger, a4, a3). You can also specify -t
landscape, which rotates a document by 90 degrees. To rotate a document whose size
is not letter, you can use the -t option twice, once for the page size, and once
for landscape. You should not use any -t option when the DVI file already contains
a papersize special, as is done by some LaTeX packages, notably hyperref.sty.
The upper left corner of each page in the .dvi file is placed one inch from the
left and one inch from the top. Use of this option is highly dependent on the
configuration file. Note that executing the letter or a4 or other PostScript
operators cause the document to be nonconforming and can cause it not to print on
certain printers, so the paper size should not execute such an operator if at all
possible.
-T papersize
Set the paper size to the given pair of dimensions. This option takes its
arguments in the same style as -O. It overrides any paper size special in the dvi
file.
-u psmapfile
Set psmapfile to be the file that dvips uses for looking up PostScript font
aliases. If psmapfile begins with a + character, then the rest of the name is used
as the name of the map file, and the map file is appended to the list of map files
(instead of replacing the list). In either case, if psmapfile has no extension,
then .map is added at the end.
-U Disable a PostScript virtual memory saving optimization that stores the character
metric information in the same string that is used to store the bitmap information.
This is only necessary when driving the Xerox 4045 PostScript interpreter. It is
caused by a bug in that interpreter that results in `garbage' on the bottom of each
character. Not recommended unless you must drive this printer.
-v Print the dvips version number and exit.
-V Download non-resident PostScript fonts as bitmaps. This requires use of `gsftopk'
or `pstopk' or some other such program(s) in order to generate the required bitmap
fonts; these programs are supplied with dvips.
-x num Set the magnification ratio to num/1000. Overrides the magnification specified in
the .dvi file. Must be between 10 and 100000. Instead of an integer, num may be a
real number for increased precision.
-X num Set the horizontal resolution in dots per inch to num.
-y num Set the magnification ratio to num/1000 times the magnification specified in the
.dvi file. See -x above.
-Y num Set the vertical resolution in dots per inch to num.
-z Pass html hyperdvi specials through to the output for eventual distillation into
PDF. This is not enabled by default to avoid including the header files
unnecessarily, and use of temporary files in creating the output.
-Z Causes bitmapped fonts to be compressed before they are downloaded, thereby
reducing the size of the PostScript font-downloading information. Especially
useful at high resolutions or when very large fonts are used. Will slow down
printing somewhat, especially on early 68000-based PostScript printers.
SEE ALSO
afm2tfm(1), tex(1), mf(1), dvitype(1), lpr(1), dvips.texi, https://tug.org/dvips.
ENVIRONMENT
Dvipsk uses the same environment variables and algorithms for finding font files as TeX
and its friends do. See the documentation for the Kpathsea library for details.
(Repeating it here is too cumbersome.)
KPATHSEA_DEBUG: Trace Kpathsea lookups; set to -1 for complete tracing.
PRINTER: see above.
NOTES
PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
AUTHOR
Tomas Rokicki; extended to virtual fonts by Don Knuth. Path searching and configuration
modifications by Karl Berry.
Maintained in TeX Live; please send bug reports or other correspondence to tex-k@tug.org
(https://lists.tug.org/tex-k).
24 October 2021 DVIPS(1)