fax2ps - convert a TIFF facsimile to compressed PostScript
fax2ps [ options ] [ file ... ]
FAX2PS(1) General Commands Manual FAX2PS(1) 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 com- pressed 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 Post- Script 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 opera- tor. 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 dimen- sions. 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 gener- ated 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. ATTRIBUTES See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes: +---------------+-----------------------+ |ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +---------------+-----------------------+ |Availability | image/library/libtiff | +---------------+-----------------------+ |Stability | Volatile | +---------------+-----------------------+ 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. Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source- code-downloads.html. This software was built from source available at https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland. The original community source was downloaded from http://down- load.osgeo.org/libtiff/tiff-4.2.0.tar.gz. Further information about this software can be found on the open source community website at http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/. BUGS fax2ps should probably figure out when it is doing a poor job of com- pressing the output and just generate PostScript to image the bitmap raster instead. SEE ALSO tiff2ps(1), libtiff(3) Libtiff library home page: http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/ libtiff November 2, 2005 FAX2PS(1)