GNU Enscript
============
SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL AMERICAN (USA) USERS.
Enscript's default output media (paper size) is A4. It is *not*
Letter. To change the default, give the configure script the
option `--with-media=Letter'. It goes like this:
$ ./configure --with-media=Letter
GNU Enscript is a drop-in replacement for the enscript program.
Enscript converts ASCII files to PostScript and stores generated
output to a file or sends it directly to the printer.
Enscript 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 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Enscript 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 Enscript. If not, see .
* Configuring Enscript for your system
There are some options in enscript you might want to modify to meet
your system's needs. You can change them all after the compilation by
editing the global configuration file `enscript.cfg' at the directory
`PREFIX/etc/'. You can also change some of the during the `configure'
step by giving the configure script appropriate options. Please,
check the following things before reporting bugs; for the most cases
these help:
** Paper size
As a default enscript uses A4 paper. To change default paper to be
for example `Letter', edit following line in the config file:
# Default output media.
DefaultMedia: A4
=> DefaultMedia: Letter
You can also select the default paper size during the configuration
by giving the configure script option --with-media=MEDIA, where
media is one of the media listed in the `lib/enscript.cfg.in' file:
A3, A4, A5, Legal, Letter, A4dj or Letterdj.
** Default output device
As a default (without any explicit options) enscript spools its
output to the printer. If you want to send outputs to stdout, edit
following line:
# Where output goes as a default.
DefaultOutputMethod: printer
=> DefaultOutputMethod: stdout
** Printer command
Enscript's default printer command is `lpr'. To change it to be for
example `lp', edit following line:
# Printer spooler command name.
Spooler: lpr
=> Spooler: lp
You can also set the spooler command during the configuration by
giving the configure script option `--with-spooler=SPOOLER'.
On SystemV machines, you might also want to change the printer queue
name switch from `-P' to `-d':
# The spooler command switch to select the printer queue.
QueueParam: -P
=> QueueParam: -d
** PostScript language level
The PostScript language level that enscript uses for its output.
The default values is 2 (PostScript 2). If your printer supports
only level 1 PostScript, you can set it to default by giving the
configure script option `--with-ps-level=1'. You can also set the
level by editing the enscript.cfg file:
# The PostScript language level that enscript should use.
PostScriptLevel: 2
=> PostScriptLevel: 1
Or, you can select it at the print time with the `--ps-level=LEVEL'
option:
$ enscript --ps-level=1 ...
* Supported Character Sets
Enscript supports following character sets:
- ISO-8859-1 ISO Latin1 (default)
- ISO-8859-2 ISO Latin2
- ISO-8859-3 ISO Latin3
- ISO-8859-4 ISO Latin4
- ISO-8859-5 ISO Cyrillic
- ISO-8859-7 ISO Greek
- ascii 7 bit ascii
- ascii fi se 7 bit ascii with following encodings:
'{' = ä (adieresis)
'|' = ö (odieresis)
'}' = å (aring)
'[' = Ä (Adieresis)
'\\' = Ö (Odieresis)
']' = Å (Aring)
- ascii dk no 7 bit ascii with following encodings:
'{' = æ (ae)
'|' = ø (oslash)
'}' = å (aring)
'[' = Æ (AE)
'\\' = Ø (Oslash)
']' = Å (Aring)
- IBM/PC standard PC/DOS character set
- Mac Macintosh character set
- VMS VMS multinational charset
- hp8 HP Roman-8 charset
- koi8 Adobe Standard Cyrillic Font KOI8 charset
- ps PostScript font's default encoding
- pslatin1 PostScript interpreter's `ISOLatin1Encoding'
* Special Escapes
Enscript supports special escapes sequences that can be used to add
simple page formatting commands to ASCII documents. User can inline
EPS files, change font on-the-fly insert comments and shade regions of
text. See file README.ESCAPES for details.
* Language sensitive highlighting
Enscript supports language sensitive code highlighting. Highlighting
is implemented by a special `states' program which processes the input
files and annotates them with enscript's special escapes. The states
definition file `enscript.st' is a machine independent ASCII file and
it can be updated without re-compilation of the enscript program. The
most recent version of this file can be downloaded from the GNU
enscript WWW home page: .
New highlighting definitions for different languages are welcome,
please send them to:
* PostScript font support
** AFM files
Enscript supports AFM (Adobe Font Metrics) files. AFM files contain
font metrics information (character widths, etc); if there is an AFM
file for the current font, enscript can count line widths and tab
stops correctly. Enscript distribution contains AFM files for the
most common PostScript fonts. These AFM files are installed to the
directory /share/enscript/.
** Fonts (.pfa or .pfb)
Enscript supports also additional PostScript fonts which are defined
in the `.pfa' or `.pfb' font files. Enscript automatically
down-loads font's description to your PostScript document whenever you
use an external disk font. Font down-loading requires that you have
both the `.afm' and `.pf{a,b}' files for you extra fonts and you have
created a font mapping file called `font.map' to your font directory.
These are the steps that are needed to make your extra fonts usable in
enscript:
1) Install the `.afm' and `.pf{a,b}' files to some appropriate
directory. Note! for a single font, both the .afm and .pf{a,b}
files must have the same prefix, filenames can differ only from
the suffix part. For example, if font `FooFont' is defined in the
file `foo.pfa', then the AFM file must be named `foo.afm'.
2) Create a font map file for the font directory. Enscript's
distribution has an utility called `mkafmmap' which does the job;
just give command:
mkafmmap *.afm
in your font directory. This command creates a file called
`font.map' to your font directory. File contains one row for each
.afm file, each row has two columns: font's PostScript name and
the prefix for the corresponding .afm file.
3) Notify enscript that it has new fonts to play with. This is done
by editing the global configuration file `enscript.cfg' or the
personal configuration file `$HOME/.enscriptrc'. Global
configuration file has an entry called 'AFMPath' which contains the
current font search path. Add your new font directory to this
path:
AFMPath: /usr/local/share/enscript/afm:/usr/local/lib/ps:/usr/lib/ps:/fonts/myfontdir
where `/fonts/myfontdir' is the new font directory.
So how does the font down-loading work? Enscript automatically
down-loads font files for header and body fonts, if it can find the
corresponding `.pfa' or `.pfb' files from the AFMPath. Enscript do
*not* down-load fonts that are specified in `^@font' escapes, however
you can down-load these font by specifying command line option
`--download-font=name' for each font. You can also specify
down-loadable fonts in the global configuration file `enscript.cfg'
or in your personal configuration file `$HOME/.enscriptrc' by giving
option `DownloadFont: name'.
* What's different as compared to the Adobe's Enscript application?
- Adobe enscript's option `-o' has been changed. In Adobe enscript
option `-o' lists missing characters. In GNU enscript `-o' is an
alias for `-p' and missing characters are listed with an option `-O'.