MPAGE(Local)MPAGE(Local)NAMEmpage - print multiple pages per sheet on PostScript
printer
SYNOPSISmpage [-1248aAcEfHloOrRStUvxX] [-b papersize]
[-B[num[lrtb]*] [-C [encoding]] [-da|p] [-D dateformat]
[-F fontname] [-h header] [-j first[-last][%interval]]
[-J startpageno] [-L lines] [-m[num[lrtb]*]
[-M[num[lrtb]*] [-p[prprog]] [-P[printer]] [-s tabstop]
[-W width] [-z printcmd] [-Z printcmd_args] [file...]]
DESCRIPTIONmpage reads plain text files or PostScript documents and
prints them on a PostScript printer with the text reduced
in size so that several pages appear on one sheet of
paper. This is useful for viewing large printouts on a
small amount of paper. It uses ISO 8859.1 to print 8-bit
characters.
The following options are recognized (note that arguments
to options may be separated from the option by spaces,
except for -B, -m, -M, -p and -P):
-1 Print 1 normal page per sheet (included for symme
try).
-2 Print 2 normal pages per sheet.
-4 Print 4 normal pages per sheet (default).
-8 Print 8 normal pages per sheet.
-a Toggle layout of the pages on the sheet so that
successively numbered pages run down the sheet, as
opposed to left to right. (default updown) .
-A This option is deprecated, see -b. Prepare output
for European A4 sized paper. For default see
'mpage -x'.
-bpapertype
Prepare output for selected paper type. Papersize
can be A3 for European A3, A4 for European A4, Let_
ter for US Letter or Legal for Legal sized paper.
For default see 'mpage -x'. To see the list of
currently available types, just give the 'mpage
-bl' or 'mpage -b?' command (Note: mpage exits
after finding such option use.)
-B[<num>[lrtb]*]
Setup a box around a particular part of your page.
Specify text box margins and line thickness. The
default is 0 columns (lines) for both left and
right (top and bottom) margins and 0 line thick
ness. Specifying -B solely toggles printing of the
box. l, r, t or b set the left, right, top or bot
tom margin respectively to <num> columns (lines).
Not specifying any of the sides, will set the line
thickness when <num> is given. For example -B1
sets the line thickness to 1. Sides with negative
margins will not print.
-c Toggle concatenation off pages from different files
on single sheets (default off).
-C[encodingfile]
Specify the character encoding file. The file
should be in the mpage library directory
(/usr/freeware/share/mpage). Mpage has an internal
default encoding based on Latin-1 or IBM codepage
850. Depending on compile time option this encod
ing definition is on or not. Not specifying an
encodingfile will toggle the usage of the internal
encoding.
-da|p Force input to be taken as ascii (a) or postscript
(p) text. This way you can print your postscript
code as text, or print postscript code that mpage
does not recognise. When using -dp, make sure that
the the postscript code contains %Page page separa
tors or else things will probably look odd.
-Ddateformat
Set the date format as in strftime(3) to be used in
date/time representations (e.g. in headers).
(Note: to be useful you probably need the -H
option.)
-e Print 2 normal pages per sheet in duplex mode.
Every first and fourth page or on one side and
every second and third on the other side. This is
more or less a combination of the -O and -E option
but then in one pass.
-E Print 2 normal pages per sheet. However, this
option will print every second and third page of
every set of four pages. This option will ignore
-a and -l. See also the -O option. Using these
options double sided prints can be created without
a duplex printer.
-f Toggles folding lines longer than page width
(default off) .
-Ffontname
Specify font. (default Courier). Check your
printer for supported fonts. Note: this has almost
nothing to do with the fonts used for your X-win
dows/KDE/Gnome environment.
-hheader
This is used only when the -p or -H switch is used
and is passed as the "-h header" option to pr(1) or
as the header for -H.
-H Create header line for each logical page separated
from page text by a horizontal line. Unless -h is
given, the header consist of last file modifica
tion, filename and page number, all in bold and
slightly larger font. This option only applies to
non-postscript files.
-Iindent
Indent text by indent characters.
-jfirst[-last][%interval]
Print just the selected sheets, specified by a num
ber, starting at 1. Here last defaults to the end
of data, interval to 1. Several -j options can be
given (upto MAXJARGS, default 100) to create a com
plex selection of pages. Thus -j1-10 selects the
first 10 sheets, while -j 1%2 prints just the odd-
numbered sheets and -j 2%2 prints just the even
ones.
You can do double-sided printing, in two passes, as
follows. If you use 3-hole punched paper, put it
in the printer such that the holes will appear at
the top of the page -- on the right as you pull out
the printer tray, in our Laser writer II NTX.
Print the odd-numbered sheets with
mpage ... -j 1%2 ...
Note the number of pages it reports. (Only half
this many will really be printed). When printing
finishes, if mpage reported an odd number of pages,
remove the last one from the stack, since there
will be no even-numbered sheet to match it. Then
arrange the stack of paper for printing on the
other side. (If it's punched, the holes will now
be on the left.) On our II NTX, the paper comes
out blank-side up; replace it in the tray still
blank-side up but rotated 180 degrees. For other
printers, you figure it out. Now print the even-
numbered sheets in reverse order with
mpage ... -r -j 2%2 ...
hoping no one else reaches the printer before you
do.
-Jstartpageno
Set the start value of the sheet page count to
startpageno instead of 1.
-k When mpage finds a %%TRailer or %%PSTrailer in the
postscript input file it normally assumes this is
the end of the postscript file and stops reading
the input file. But when the PS file includes EPS
files, %%Trailers might be anywhere. Using this
option ignores the %%TRailer and %%PSTRailer lines.
-l Toggle printing landscape or portrait mode. Land
scape pages are 55 lines long by 132 characters
wide by default. Portrait pages are 66 lines long
by 80 characters wide by default. (default por
trait.)
-Llines
Adjust the page reduction parameters so that lines
lines will fit in the space of one page. This
overrides the default values normally supplied.
(See -l.) If used in conjunction with -p then this
value is passed to the pr(1) as well. As a side
effect this changes the font size as well (as will
the -W option.) So while there is an option to
change font family, there is no explicit option to
change font size!
-m[<num>[lrtb]*]
Specify sheet margin. The default margin is 20
points. Only specifying -m sets left margin to 40
points. l, r, t or b set left, right, top or bot
tom margin respectively to <num> points. Not spec
ifying any of the sides will set all sides when
<num> is given. <num> defaults to 40 points. For
example -m10 sets all margins to 10 points.
-ml50tb sets left margin to default 40 and top and
bottom margin to 50 points. -m50l25bt30r set bot
tom and top margin to 25, left margin to 50 and
right margin to 30 points. Margins can have nega
tive numbers. Very large values have funny
effects. This is left as an exercise to the user.
-M[<num>[lrtb]*]
Specify logical page margins. For syntax, see -m
option. Defaults are 4 for -M solely, and 8 for
<num>. Margins can be negative. This way large
white borders in your (postscript) documents can be
reduced. Very large values have funny effects.
This is left as an exercise to the user.
-o Toggle printing of outlines around each reduced
page (default on).
-O Print 2 normal pages per sheet. However, this
option will print every first and fourth page of
every set of four pages. This option will ignore
-a and -l. See also the -E option. Using these
options double sided prints can be created without
a duplex printer.
-p[prprog]
Pipe input through prprog command (including
specified options) before printing (assumes the
input is a text file). When no command is speci
fied, it defaults to pr(1).
-P[printer]
Specify the printer to which the PostScript output
will be sent (e.g.lpr -Pprinter). Using -P with no
printer specified will send the PostScript to the
default printer queue (e.g. lpr). Using -P- will
return output to stdout, useful in combination with
MPAGE environment variable. Without -P output will
be send to standard output.
-r Reverse printing. The last sheet is printed first.
The way of arranging reduced pages on the sheets
doesn't change.
-R Switch to left to right mode, starting first page
on left bottom corner. This might be useful for
landscape postscript files. (Note: using -l after
-R undoes -R, and switches to normal landscape
mode.
-stabstop
Set tabstop width (default 8 characters). Should
by >= 2.
-S Accept non-square page reduction. By default,
pages are shrunk equally in X and Y, even if this
wastes some space on the sheet. With -S, reduced
pages are larger but slightly distorted. (only used
when printing postscript files.)
-t Toggle printing on both sides of the paper. This
will toggle duplex mode of the printer. Use this
option only if your printer is capable of printing
in duplex mode. (default off).
-T Toggle tumble of every second pages when printing
in duplex mode. Use this option only if your
printer is capable of printing in duplex mode and
together with -t.
-U This option is deprecated, see -b. Prepare output
for US Letter sized paper. For default see 'mpage
-x'.
-v Toggle printing a count of the number of sheets
produced for printing (default off.)
-Wwidth
Adjust the page reduction parameters so that a line
with width characters long will fit in the space of
one page. This overrides the default values nor
mally supplied. (See -l.) If used in conjunction
with -p then this value is passed to the s pr(1)
program as well. See also the -L option on font
sizes.
-x Force usage display, which also shows current
defaults.
-X [header]
Print header on the left and the page number on the
right of each physical page (sheet). If no header
is given, the default is the current filename (note
influence of -c), the filename of the first file on
the page is used.
-zprintcommand
Specify command to use to send output to. Default
is lpr (1) for BSD style spooler, lp (1) for SYSV
style spooler. You can specify command line
options, but note -Z. For example -zlp for system
V Unix.
-Zprintprog_queuename_arg
Specify what option to use for the "-z printcom_
mand" to specify a printqueue. For example -zlp
-Z-d for system V Unix. Default is -P for BSD
style spooler, -d for SYSV style spooler.
ENVIRONMENTmpage examines the PRINTER (or LPDEST for SYSV style
spooler) environment variable to override its default
printer.
The MPAGE_LIB environment variable can be used to control
where the character encoding files (-C) can be found.
mpage also examines the MPAGE environment variable for
default option settings. Any option or combination of
options can be specified in the MPAGE environment vari
able. For example, if MPAGE is set to the string:
-2oPqms -L60
it would (in the absence of other command line arguments)
print 2 pages per sheet, 60 lines per page, with outlines,
on the printer named qms (overriding the PRINTER/LPDEST
environment variable, if it exists.) In the environment
variable, white space is used as an option delimiter, and
no quoting is recognized.
Any command line options will override both the PRINTER
and MPAGE environment variables.
FILES
/usr/tmp/mpageXXXXXX
/usr/freeware/share/mpage
BUGS
Suffers under the burden of far too many switches. (But
you wanted the choices!)
NULL characters in a postscript input file will cause
mpage to crash!
Many others, we're sure.
Mpage is year 2000 compliant, as long as the underlying
operating system is!!!
VERSION
Version 2.5.3, Released oktober 2002.
Location:
http://www.mesa.nl/pub/mpage
ftp://ftp.mesa.nl/pub/mpage
AUTHORS
Marcel Mol <marcel@mesa.nl> (current maintainer).
Mark P. Hahn (Original author)
2002/10/20 MPAGE(Local)
