NAME¶
fax2ps - convert a
TIFF facsimile to compressed PostScript™
SYNOPSIS¶
fax2ps [
options ] [
file ... ]
DESCRIPTION¶
fax2ps reads one or more
TIFF facsimile image files and
prints a compressed form of PostScript on the standard output that is suitable
for printing.
By default, each page is scaled to reflect the image dimensions and resolutions
stored in the file. The
-x and
-y options can be used to specify
the horizontal and vertical image resolutions (lines/inch), respectively. If
the
-S option is specified, each page is scaled to fill an output page.
The default output page is 8.5 by 11 inches. Alternate page dimensions can be
specified in inches with the
-W and
-H options.
By default
fax2ps generates PostScript for all pages in the file. The
-p option can be used to select one or more pages from a multi-page
document.
fax2ps generates a compressed form of PostScript that is optimized for
sending pages of text to a PostScript printer attached to a host through a
low-speed link (such as a serial line). Each output page is filled with white
and then only the black areas are drawn. The PostScript specification of the
black drawing operations is optimized by using a special font that encodes the
move-draw operations required to fill the black regions on the page. This
compression scheme typically results in a substantially reduced PostScript
description, relative to the straightforward imaging of the page with a
PostScript
image operator. This algorithm can, however, be ineffective
for continuous-tone and white-on-black images. For these images, it sometimes
is more efficient to send the raster bitmap image directly; see
tiff2ps(1).
OPTIONS¶
- -p number
- Print only the indicated page. Multiple pages may be
printed by specifying this option more than once.
- -x resolution
- Use resolution as the horizontal resolution, in
dots/inch, of the image data. By default this value is taken from the
file.
- -y resolution
- Use resolution as the vertical resolution, in
lines/inch, of the image data. By default this value is taken from the
file.
- -S
- Scale each page of image data to fill the output page
dimensions. By default images are presented according to the dimension
information recorded in the TIFF file.
- -W width
- Use width as the width, in inches, of the output
page.
- -H height
- Use height as the height, in inches, of the output
page.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
Some messages about malformed
TIFF images come from the
TIFF library.
Various messages about badly formatted facsimile images may be generated due to
transmission errors in received facsimile.
fax2ps attempts to recover
from such data errors by resynchronizing decoding at the end of the current
scanline. This can result in long horizontal black lines in the resultant
PostScript image.
NOTES¶
If the destination printer supports PostScript Level II then it is always faster
to just send the encoded bitmap generated by the
tiff2ps(1) program.
BUGS¶
fax2ps should probably figure out when it is doing a poor job of
compressing the output and just generate PostScript to image the bitmap raster
instead.
SEE ALSO¶
tiff2ps(1),
libtiff(3)
Libtiff library home page:
http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
