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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THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE!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)