SourceFiles.org - Use the Source, Luke

PSDIM - calculate optimal page layout for n-up printing

DESCRIPTION

Psdim is a small utility to be used in conjunction with pstops. It looks at the contents of a postscript document to determine the size of the printed pages. From this, it calculates the optimal placement of the pages for n-up printing. It outputs a format string suitable for processing by pstops.

In order to determine the size of the pages in a postscript document accurately, psdim uses the ghostscript interpreter to render the document. For this reason, psdim is relatively slow, but yields very accurate results that could not be obtained by just naively looking at the postscript headers.

DEPENDENCIES

For psdim to work, ghostscript must be installed on your system.

COMPILATION AND INSTALLATION

For complete compilation instructions, see the file INSTALL. In practice the following three commands to the trick:

./configure
make
make install

The ./configure script recognizes the following non-standard options:

   --enable-metric         use metric units (centimeters) as default
   --enable-a4             use a4 as the default papersize

USAGE

See the man page for full usage information.

Usage: psdim [options] [file]

Options: -h, --help - print this help message and exit -v, --version - print version info and exit -l, --license - print license info and exit -q, --quiet - suppress progress info on stderr -x, --width <dim> - output page width -y, --height <dim> - output page height -p, --page <format> - select output page size (e.g. letter, a4) -m, --margin <dim> - margin around page -n, --hmargin <dim> - horizontal margin (horizontal space) -o, --vmargin <dim> - vertical margin (vertical space) -s, --sep <dim> - separation between pages -t, --hsep <dim> - horizontal separation -u, --vsep <dim> - vertical separation -L, --landscape - landscape orientation -R, --seascape - seascape orientation -U, --upside-down - upside down orientation -P, --portrait - portrait orientation -f, --format <n>x<m> - arrange pages in n rows and m columns -a, --hpolicy <n> - horizontal alignment policy -b, --vpolicy <n> - vertical alignment policy -c, --columnmode - sort pages in columns -d, --righttoleft - page numbers increase right to left -e, --bottomtotop - page numbers increase bottom to top -C, --color - handle non-white backgrounds -S, --shrink - only shrink, never enlarge page -1, --1up - fit to size mode -2, --2up - 1x2 landscape mode -4, --4up - 2x2 portrait mode -8, --8up - 2x4 landscape mode -9, --9up - 3x3 portrait mode -6, --16up - 4x4 portrait mode

Dimensions can have optional units, e.g. 6.5in, 15cm. Default is inches unless --enable-metric was configured during compilation.

Valid page formats are: a4, a3, a5, b5, letter, legal, tabloid, statement, executive, folio, quarto, 10x14. Default is letter unless --enable-a4 was configured during compilation.

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. See also http://www.gnu.org/.

See the file COPYING for details.