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4 <title>GNU Enscript Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)</title>
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8 <h1>GNU Enscript Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)</h1>
9
10 <address>$Id: FAQ.html,v 1.1.1.1 2003/03/05 07:25:53 mtr Exp $</address>
11 <hr>
12
13 <center>
14 <b>For GNU Enscript version 1.6.0</b>
15 <p>
16
17 This FAQ assumes that you are using the latest version of GNU
18 Enscript, there are many old bugs and misfeatures but many of them
19 have been fixed for the latest version. For on-line information about
20 the latest version, bugs, features, etc. please, check the GNU
21 Enscript WWW home at URL:
22 <a href="http://www.iki.fi/~mtr/genscript/">http://www.iki.fi/~mtr/genscript/</a>.
23
24 </center>
25 <hr>
26
27 <h2>Contents</h2>
28 <ul>
29 <li><a href="#misc"><b>Misc</b></a>
30 <li><a href="#charactersets"><b>Character Sets</b></a>
31 <li><a href="#outputmedia"><b>Printing, Output Media</b></a>
32 </ul>
33
34 <a name="misc">
35 <hr>
36 <h2>Misc</h2>
37 <ul>
38 <li> <b>Does enscript read PPD files?</b>
39 <br>
40 No. PPD file support is on my TODO list, I will implement in the near
41 future.
42 <p>
43
44 <li> <b>What's missing / what's different in the Adobe enscript
45 emulation?</b>
46 <ul>
47 <li>Enscript's option `-o' has been changed. In enscript `-o' lists
48 missing characters. In GNU enscript `-o' is an alias
49 for `-p' and missing characters are listed with an option `-O'.
50 </ul>
51 <li> <b>Make install installs with the current umask. I use 077 for
52 root, which gives all the installed directories rwx------. No good
53 for general use...</b>
54 <br>
55 Makefile is just doing what it was told. Change your umask for
56 the installation time or override INSTALL_DATA and INSTALL_PROGRAM
57 Makefile variables.
58 </ul>
59
60 <a name="charactersets">
61 <hr>
62 <h2>Character Sets</h2>
63
64 <ul>
65 <li> <b>How can I use ibmpc's line drawing characters?</b>
66 <p>
67 First, you will need a PostScript font (.pfa or .pfb) which has
68 those line drawing characters. This is the trickiest task
69 since these fonts are really rare. Once you find one, you must
70 make it available for enscript (see file README for details) so
71 it can be downloaded to the printer.
72 <p>
73 Since these suitable fonts are so rare, the ibmpc encoding do not
74 contain mappings for those line drawing characters, this means they
75 won't print if you use the ibmpc encoding. You must rely on the
76 font's build-in encoding and print your files with option `-X ps' or
77 `--encoding=ps'.
78 <p>
79 <li> <b>How can I use the ISO-8859-7 input encoding?</b>
80 <p>
81 Manolis Lourakis
82 (<a href="mailto:lourakis@csd.uch.gr">lourakis@csd.uch.gr</a>)
83 has written a document that describes how this can be done. It
84 can be found from URL:
85
86 <blockquote>
87 <a href="http://www.csd.uch.gr/~lourakis/genscript/">http://www.csd.uch.gr/~lourakis/genscript/</a>
88 </blockquote>
89 <p>
90 <li> <b>I tried the iso8859/2 input encoding but enscript says that 44
91 characters were missing and I get '?' on paper instead of latin2
92 characters. Did I missed something? (This answer holds also for
93 other input encodings).</b>
94 <p>
95 No, everything is ok but the problem is that Adobe's default Courier
96 font does not have characters named: Aogonek, Lcaron, Sacute, Tcaron,
97 Zacute, ... (those 44 missing characters) so enscript can't print
98 them. You can solve this if you have a courier (or whatever) font
99 that has those missing characters. One good canditate is courier
100 font distributed with the X distribution, it is called cour.pf{a,b}
101 and should be found from all good FTP sites.
102 <p>
103 To solve this problem, you must:
104 <ol>
105 <li> find a nice font to do the job.
106 <li> copy this font and its AFM file to some appropriate directory,
107 let's say `$HOME/fonts/':
108
109 <pre>
110 $ ls fonts/cour*
111 fonts/cour.afm fonts/cour.pfa
112 </pre>
113
114 <li> create a font map for this new font directory (<b>mkafmmap</b>
115 program comes with the enscript distribution):
116
117 <pre>
118 $ cd fonts
119 $ mkafmmap *.afm
120 file=font.map
121 BrushScript.afm...
122 Hobo.afm...
123 Stencil.afm...
124 cour.afm...
125 uaqrrc.afm...
126 ugqb.afm...
127 unmr.afm...
128 unmrs.afm...
129 </pre>
130
131 <li> edit enscript's personal (or the global) configuration file to
132 use this new font:
133
134 <pre>
135 $ cat ~/.enscriptrc
136 #
137 # My enscript init file.
138 #
139
140 DefaultFancyHeader: emacs
141
142 #PageLabelFormat: long
143
144 Clean7Bit: 0
145
146 AFMPath: /home/mtr/fonts:/usr/local/share/enscript
147 </pre>
148
149 <li> now it should work:
150
151 <pre>
152 $ cd myprogs/enscript/
153 $ enscript -v -G2r -pfoo.ps latin2.txt
154 AFM: scanning path...
155 AFM: reading font map "/home/mtr/fonts/font.map"
156 AFM: reading font map "/usr/local/share/enscript/font.map"
157 reading AFM info for font "Courier"
158 processing file "latin2.txt"...
159 [ 3 pages * 1 copy ] left in foo.ps
160 </pre>
161 </ol>
162 Now enscript uses this new courier font that has those missing
163 characters. Since the font file `.pfa' is found from the font
164 path, enscript automatically includes that font file to your
165 PostScript output. This means that it can be printed with any
166 PostScript printer; now file really contains that font so it does
167 not depend on printer's fonts.
168 <p>
169 </ul>
170
171 <a name="outputmedia">
172 <hr>
173 <h2>Printing, Output Media</h2>
174
175 <ul>
176 <li> <b>I printed some documents with options `-G2r', everything goes just
177 fine but there are no page numbers in the upper right corner. What
178 goes wrong?</b>
179 <br> You are probably using wrong output media; your printer uses
180 different output media than enscript. Check what is your default
181 output media in the <b>enscript.cfg</b> (and <b>$HOME/.enscriptrc</b>)
182 file and change it if needed. For example, to change enscript's
183 default media A4 to Letter, you must to do the following change:
184
185 <pre>
186 # Default output media.
187 DefaultMedia: A4
188 =>
189 DefaultMedia: Letter
190 </pre>
191
192 You can also set the default output media during the
193 configuration step, just give configure script option
194 <p>
195
196 <b>--with-media</b>[=<i>media</i>]
197 <p>
198 If no <i>media</i> is given, it defaults to <tt>Letter</tt>.
199 <p>
200
201 <li> <b>How can I change margins under enscript?</b>
202 <br> You have to define a new output media which has better margins.
203 This is quite easy, just define the new media in enscript's
204 configuration file. For example, below is a new `A4BigMargin'
205 media with bigger margins:
206
207 <pre>
208 # Media definitions:
209 # name width height llx lly urx ury
210 Media: A3 839 1190 18 17 821 1173
211 Media: A4 595 839 18 17 581 822
212 Media: A5 420 595 18 17 406 578
213 Media: Letter 612 792 18 17 597 776
214 Media: Legal 612 1008 18 17 597 992
215
216 Media: A4BigMargin 595 839 36 34 563 805
217 </pre>
218
219 You can select this media by giving enscript option `-M A4BigMargin'
220 or by setting it to be your default output media by editing
221 <b>enscript.cfg</b>:
222
223 <pre>
224 # Default output media.
225 DefaultMedia: A4
226 =>
227 DefaultMedia: A4BigMargin
228 </pre>
229 <p>
230
231 <li> <b>Ghostscript does not show enscript's outputs correctly, what's the
232 problem?</b>
233 <br> There is one minor problem in enscript / ghostscript co-operation.
234 Enscript's default output media is <b>A4</b> (because I live in
235 Europe) and GhostScript's default output media is <b>Letter</b>.
236 There are three solutions for this problem:<p>
237
238 <ol>
239 <li> Tell Enscript that it should use the Letter media:
240 <pre>
241 $ enscript -MLetter <i>other options and files</i>
242 </pre>
243
244 <li> Fix Enscript<br>
245 Add / edit following line to file enscript.cfg:
246 <pre>
247 # Default output media.
248 DefaultMedia: A4
249
250 =>
251
252 # Default output media.
253 DefaultMedia: Letter
254 </pre>
255
256 <li> Fix GhostScript <br>
257 edit following line to file gs_init.ps:
258 <pre>
259 % Optionally choose a default paper size other than U.S. letter.
260 % (a4) /PAPERSIZE where { pop pop } { /PAPERSIZE exch def } ifelse
261
262 =>
263
264 % Optionally choose a default paper size other than U.S. letter.
265 (a4) /PAPERSIZE where { pop pop } { /PAPERSIZE exch def } ifelse
266 </pre>
267 or give ghostscript option <code>-sPAPERSIZE=a4</code>
268 </ol>
269 <p>
270 <li> <b>My PostScript printer supports only level 1 PostScript. How
271 can I setup enscript to work with it?</b>
272 <p>
273 The level 2 features are protected by an if-else block in the
274 generated output file. So, basicly everything should work smoothly.
275 But, there is a but. As a default, enscript generates the page size
276 selection code, and it might cause a syntax error on level 1
277 PostScript engines. This problem is fixed by disabling the page size
278 generation. Just edit your <strong>.enscriptrc</strong> or
279 <strong>enscript.cfg</strong> files and add the following line:
280
281 <pre>
282 GeneratePageSize: 0
283 </pre>
284
285 </ul>
286
287 <HR>
288 Please send comments on these web pages to
289
290 <A HREF="mailto:mtr@iki.fi"><EM>mtr@iki.fi</EM></A>.
291 <P>
292 Copyright © 1998 Markku Rossi
293 <P>
294 Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted
295 in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
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