				README


Please send problems and feedback to Akim Demaille
(demaille@inf.enst.fr)

Please send happiness messages to both Akim & Miguel
(demaille@inf.enst.fr, Miguel.Santana@st.com)

Contents:
=========
	 1. Presentation
	 2. Installation
	 3. Distribution content
	 4. More ?


1. Presentation
===============

a2ps is an ASCII to PostScript converter.  As the copyright indicates,
this distribution can be freely redistributed _provided_you_never_change
this_copyright_.

This program includes support for:
- various encodings,
- various medias,
- various printer interfaces,
- various output styles,
- various programming languages,
- and various speaking languages.

This version is very different from the versions up to 4.6.*.  In
particular, there are *no man pages*, and those of previous versions
are _not_ relevant.  The documentation, consisting of info files, is
in the doc/ directory.  You may want to print doc/a2ps.dvi, or fetch
the PostScript version available on the web pages.

2. Installation
===============

Some notes on the distribution:

    Most of the work for the installation is done by ./configure.

    ======================================================
    Reading INSTALL is mandatory to understand the process.
    ======================================================

    Some choices are to make, and to give to ./configure
	--disable-nls
		if you do not want to use Native Language Support
		(i.e. the ability to speak another tongue than English)
	--with-gnu-gettext
		if you want to use the GNU gettext library for
		NLS, instead of available NLS services

    Note (for novices). If you are not root, you should give
    ./configure the option --prefix=$HOME to be able to install.

 || =======================================================
 || Setting correctly the top of misc/a2ps.cfg is MANDATORY
 || =======================================================
 ||
 || Before `make install', set the default values you want in the file
 || misc/a2ps.cfg.  It is absolutely essential that you define
 || correctly is misc/a2ps.cfg the following lines:
 ||	1. DefaultPrinter:
 ||	2. UnkwownPrinter:
 ||	3. Options: --encoding=
 ||	4. Options: --media=
 || =======================================================
 || Setting correctly the top of misc/a2ps.cfg is MANDATORY
 || =======================================================

    Remember that << make install >> is mandatory for a2ps to work
    correctly.  Once the << make install >> done, you may remove this
    version directory.

    This program has been successfully ported to Solaris, SunOS, Linux, 
    HP-UX, AIX 3.2, AIX 4.2, MS-DOS (Win95) with various compilers.
    It is even used as a filter for print services.

    Note: If you `make check' with SunOS' cc, you will have many
	  differences in the PostScript tested.  This is due to a
	  different behavior of atan2, which I don't understand.



3. Distribution content
=======================

Some interesting files/directories you might want to look at are:

	README		This message
	INSTALL		Information on the installation process
	ABOUT_NLS	A presentation of GNU's Native Language Support
			project
	TODO		Some things to be done
	doc/		The Texinfo file
	misc/a2ps.cfg	The default configuration
	po/		Files for the translation


4. More ?
=========

	a2ps has a home page where the latest version may be found.
		http://www-stud.enst.fr/~demaille/a2ps.html
	There, you may also find an html version of the documentaion,
	and a postscript (A4, 2 up) version.


	There, you will also see the future of a2ps, which provides:
	- independent files to implement pretty-printing,
	- much more powerfull named output (called printers in
	  this version),
	- backup of output files,
	- a dynamic library to produce PostScript from your very
	  own programs,
	- regular expression matching in the style sheets,
	- new languages,
	- new encodings,
	- and more...

PS(um): if you're happy with this program, or just if you installed
it, please let_us_know! We would be so happy :).


