DVIPS(1) 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THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE!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 resi-
dent 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 ex-
ist.
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. Gener-
ally only useful on machines with a very limited amount of mem-
ory, 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 sep-
arations 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 mul-
tiple 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 ad-
ditional 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 position-
ing of letters in resident PostScript fonts. Must be between 10
and 10000. This affects both the horizontal and vertical resolu-
tion. 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. Allow-
ing 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 bound-
ing 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 dis-
ables 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 circum-
stances, dvips will split the document up into `sections' to be
processed independently; this is most often done for memory rea-
sons. Using this option tells dvips to place each section into a
separate file; the new file names are created replacing the suf-
fix 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 auto-
matically.
-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 pro-
grams. 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 occur-
rence 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 re-
quests 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 de-
fault 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 prob-
lems - 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 excla-
mation mark, then the remainder will be used as an argument to
popen; thus, specifying !lpr as the output file will automati-
cally 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 op-
tion if you want both.
-O offset
Move the origin by a certain amount. The offset is a comma-sepa-
rated 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 imple-
mented 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, an-
other 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 \spe-
cial'{} (via backticks ` ) and config files (via the E option),
and opening of any absolute filenames. -R1 , the default, for-
bids 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 appro-
priate 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 op-
tion 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 execut-
ing the letter or a4 or other PostScript operators cause the doc-
ument to be nonconforming and can cause it not to print on cer-
tain printers, so the paper size should not execute such an oper-
ator 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 Post-
Script 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 exten-
sion, 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 or-
der to generate the required bitmap fonts; these programs are
supplied with dvips.
-x num Set the magnification ratio to num/1000. Overrides the magnifi-
cation specified in the .dvi file. Must be between 10 and
100000. Instead of an integer, num may be a real number for in-
creased 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 down-
loaded, thereby reducing the size of the PostScript font-down-
loading information. Especially useful at high resolutions or
when very large fonts are used. Will slow down printing some-
what, 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)
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