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DVIPS(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual DVIPS(1)
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THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE!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
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 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
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
-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.
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)