# dvips - convert a TeX DVI file to PostScript - man(1) - [phpMan] [_DVIPS_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/DVIPS/1/markdown) General Commands Manual [_DVIPS_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/DVIPS/1/markdown) ## NAME dvips - convert a TeX DVI file to PostScript ## SYNOPSIS **dvips **[_OPTIONS_] _file_[**.dvi**] ## DESCRIPTION THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE! See the Texinfo documentation instead. You can read it either in Emacs or with the standalone **info **program. The program **dvips **takes a DVI file _file_[**.dvi**] produced by TeX (or by some other processor such as GFtoDVI) and converts it to PostScript, sending the output to a file or directly to a printer. The DVI file may be specified without the **.dvi **extension. Fonts used may either be resident in the printer or defined as bitmaps in PK files, or a `virtual' combination of both. If the **mktexpk **program is installed, **dvips **will automatically invoke METAFONT to gen‐ erate fonts that don't already exist. For more information, see the Texinfo manual _dvips.texi_, which should be installed somewhere on your system, hopefully accessible through the standard Info tree. ## OPTIONS ### -a loading those characters actually used. Generally only useful on machines with a very limited amount of memory, like some PCs. ### -A ### -b num _#numcopies_ option. This can be useful in conjunction with a header file setting _\bop-_ _hook_ to do color separations or other neat tricks. ### -B ### -c num option below.) ### -C num Slower than the _-c_ option, but easier on the hands, and faster than resubmitting the same PostScript file multiple times. ### -d num ing expeditions; it will work only if **dvips **has been compiled with the DEBUG option. If nonzero, prints additional information on standard error. For maximum information, you can use `-1'. See the Dvips Texinfo manual for more details. ### -D num fonts that are loaded and also the positioning of letters in resident PostScript fonts. Must be between 10 and 10000. This affects both the horizontal and vertical resolution. If a high resolution (something greater than 400 dpi, say) is selected, the _-Z_ flag should probably also be used. ### -e num lution-independent position on the page. The default value of this parameter is reso‐ lution dependent. Allowing individual characters to `drift' from their correctly rounded positions by a few pixels, while regaining the true position at the beginning of each new word, improves the spacing of letters in words. ### -E works on one-page files, and it only looks at marks made by characters and rules, not by any included graphics. In addition, it gets the glyph metrics from the _tfm_ file, so characters that lie outside their enclosing _tfm_ box may confuse it. In addition, the bounding box might be a bit too loose if the character glyph has significant left or right side bearings. Nonetheless, this option works well for creating small EPSF files for equations or tables or the like. (Note, of course, that **dvips **output is resolution dependent and thus does not make very good EPSF files, especially if the images are to be scaled; use these EPSF files with a great deal of care.) ### -f standard output. The standard input must be seekable, so it cannot be a pipe. If you must use a pipe, write a shell script that copies the pipe output to a temporary file and then points **dvips **at this file. This option also disables the automatic reading of the _PRINTER_ environment variable, and turns off the automatic sending of control D if it was turned on with the _-F_ option or in the configuration file; use _-F_ after this option if you want both. ### -F Script file. This is useful when **dvips **is driving the printer directly instead of working through a spooler, as is common on extremely small systems. NOTE! DO NOT USE THIS OPTION! ### -G be useful sometimes. ### -h name Prepend file _name_ as an additional header file. (However, if the name is simply `-' suppress all header files from the output.) This header file gets added to the Post‐ Script _userdict_. ### -i the document up into `sections' to be processed independently; this is most often done for memory reasons. Using this option tells **dvips **to place each section into a sepa‐ rate file; the new file names are created replacing the suffix of the supplied output file name by a three-digit sequence number. This option is most often used in con‐ junction with the _-S_ option which sets the maximum section length in pages. For in‐ stance, some phototypesetters cannot print more than ten or so consecutive pages be‐ fore running out of steam; these options can be used to automatically split a book into ten-page sections, each to its own file. ### -j release. Some debugging flags trace this operation. You can also control partial downloading on a per-font basis, via the **psfonts.map **file. ### -k either with a paper size special or with the _-T_ option) by a half inch in each dimen‐ sion. It translates each page by a quarter inch and draws cross-style crop marks. It is mostly useful with typesetters that can set the page size automatically. ### -K to be removed. This is sometimes necessary to get around bugs in spoolers or Post‐ Script post-processing programs. Specifically, the %%Page comments, when left in, of‐ ten cause difficulties. Use of this flag can cause some included graphics to fail, since the PostScript header macros from some software packages read portions of the input stream line by line, searching for a particular comment. This option has been turned off by default because PostScript previewers and spoolers have been getting better. ### -l num the document. If the _num_ is prefixed by an equals sign, then it (and any argument to the _-p_ option) is treated as a sequence number, rather than a value to compare with _\count0_ values. Thus, using _-l_ _=9_ will end with the ninth page of the document, no matter what the pages are actually numbered. On the other hand, if _num_ is suffixed by `.SEQ', the SEQth occurrence of _num_ is used; for example, _-l_ _99.2_ says to end process‐ ing with the second page numbered 99 in the document. ### -m ### -mode mode Use _mode_ as the Metafont device name for path searching and font generation. This overrides any value from configuration files. With the default paths, explicitly specifying the mode also makes the program assume the fonts are in a subdirectory named _mode_. ### -M to generate the fonts are appended to the file _missfont.log_ in the current directory; this file can then be executed and deleted to create the missing fonts. ### -n num ### -N terpret PostScript comments in weird ways, or on some PostScript printers. Old ver‐ sions of TranScript in particular cannot handle modern Encapsulated PostScript. ### -noomega This will disable the use of Omega extensions when interpreting DVI files. By de‐ fault, the additional opcodes _129_ and _134_ are recognized by dvips as Omega or pTeX ex‐ tensions and interpreted as requests to set 2-byte characters. ### -noptex This will disable the use of pTeX extensions when interpreting DVI files. By default, the additional opcodes _130_ and _135_ are recognized by dvips as pTeX extensions and in‐ terpreted as requests to set 3-byte characters, and _255_ as request to change the type‐ setting direction. The only drawback is that the virtual font array will (at least temporarily) require 65536 or more positions instead of the default 256 positions, i.e., the memory re‐ quirements of dvips will be somewhat larger. If you find this unacceptable or en‐ counter another problem with the Omega or pTeX extensions, you can switch off the pTeX extension by using **-noptex**, or both by using **-noomega **(but please do send a bug report if you find such problems - see the bug address in the **AUTHORS **section below). ### -o name The output will be sent to file _name_ If no file name is given (i.e., -o is last on the command line), the default name is _file.ps_ where the .dvi file was called _file.dvi_; if this option isn't given, any default in the configuration file is used. If the first character of the supplied output file name is an exclamation mark, then the remainder will be used as an argument to _popen_; thus, specifying _!lpr_ as the output file will automatically queue the file for printing. This option also disables the automatic reading of the _PRINTER_ environment variable, and turns off the automatic sending of control D if it was turned on with the _-F_ option or in the configuration file; use _-F_ after this option if you want both. ### -O offset Move the origin by a certain amount. The _offset_ is a comma-separated pair of dimen‐ sions, such as _.1in,-.3cm_ (in the same syntax used in the _papersize_ special). The origin of the page is shifted from the default position (of one inch down, one inch to the right from the upper left corner of the paper) by this amount. ### -p num ### -pp pagelist A comma-separated list of pages and ranges (a-b) may be given, which will be inter‐ preted as _\count0_ values. Pages not specified will not be printed. Multiple **-pp **op‐ tions may be specified or all pages and page ranges can be specified with one **-pp **op‐ tion. ### -P printername Sets up the output for the appropriate printer. This is implemented by reading in _config.printername_ , which can then set the output pipe (as in, _!lpr_ _-Pprintername_ as well as the font paths and any other _config.ps_ defaults for that printer only. Note that _config.ps_ is read before _config.printername_ In addition, another file called _~/.dvipsrc_ is searched for immediately after _config.ps_; this file is intended for user defaults. If no _-P_ command is given, the environment variable _PRINTER_ is checked. If that variable exists, and a corresponding configuration file exists, that configura‐ tion file is read in. ### -q rors to standard error. ### -r ### -R[0|1|2] Run securely. **-R2 **disables both shell command execution in _\special'{}_ (via backticks **` **) and config files (via the _E_ option), and opening of any absolute filenames. **-R1 **, the default, forbids shell escapes but allows absolute filenames. **-R0 **allows both. The config file option is _z_ ### -s the file to not be truly conformant, and is thus not recommended, but is useful if you are driving the printer directly and don't care too much about the portability of the output. ### -S num with the _-i_ option; see that documentation above for more information. ### -t papertype This sets the paper type to _papertype_. The _papertype_ should be defined in one of the configuration files, along with the appropriate code to select it. (Currently known types include **letter**, **legal**, **ledger**, **a4**, **a3**). You can also specify **-t landscape**, which rotates a document by 90 degrees. To rotate a document whose size is not let‐ ter, you can use the _-t_ option twice, once for the page size, and once for landscape. You should not use any _-t_ option when the DVI file already contains a _papersize_ spe‐ cial, as is done by some LaTeX packages, notably hyperref.sty. The upper left corner of each page in the _.dvi_ file is placed one inch from the left and one inch from the top. Use of this option is highly dependent on the configura‐ tion file. Note that executing the **letter **or **a4 **or other PostScript operators cause the document to be nonconforming and can cause it not to print on certain printers, so the paper size should not execute such an operator if at all possible. ### -T papersize Set the paper size to the given pair of dimensions. This option takes its arguments in the same style as _-O_. It overrides any paper size special in the dvi file. ### -u psmapfile Set _psmapfile_ to be the file that dvips uses for looking up PostScript font aliases. If _psmapfile_ begins with a **+ **character, then the rest of the name is used as the name of the map file, and the map file is appended to the list of map files (instead of re‐ placing the list). In either case, if _psmapfile_ has no extension, then **.map **is added at the end. ### -U ric information in the same string that is used to store the bitmap information. This is only necessary when driving the Xerox 4045 PostScript interpreter. It is caused by a bug in that interpreter that results in `garbage' on the bottom of each character. Not recommended unless you must drive this printer. ### -v ### -V `pstopk' or some other such program(s) in order to generate the required bitmap fonts; these programs are supplied with **dvips**. ### -x num .dvi file. Must be between 10 and 100000. Instead of an integer, _num_ may be a real number for increased precision. ### -X num ### -y num file. See **-x **above. ### -Y num ### -z This is not enabled by default to avoid including the header files unnecessarily, and use of temporary files in creating the output. ### -Z the size of the PostScript font-downloading information. Especially useful at high resolutions or when very large fonts are used. Will slow down printing somewhat, es‐ pecially on early 68000-based PostScript printers. ## SEE ALSO [afm2tfm(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/afm2tfm/1/markdown), [tex(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/tex/1/markdown), [mf(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/mf/1/markdown), [dvitype(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/dvitype/1/markdown), [lpr(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/lpr/1/markdown), _dvips.texi_, . ## ENVIRONMENT Dvipsk uses the same environment variables and algorithms for finding font files as TeX and its friends do. See the documentation for the Kpathsea library for details. (Repeating it here is too cumbersome.) KPATHSEA_DEBUG: Trace Kpathsea lookups; set to -1 for complete tracing. PRINTER: see above. ## NOTES PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. ## AUTHOR Tomas Rokicki; extended to virtual fonts by Don Knuth. Path searching and configuration mod‐ ifications by Karl Berry. Maintained in TeX Live; please send bug reports or other correspondence to (). 24 October 2021 [_DVIPS_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/DVIPS/1/markdown)