FOOMATIC-PPD-OPTIONS(1)

💖 FOOMATIC-PPD-OPTIONS 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from the General Commands Manual — it's the manual for foomatic-ppd-options, and I'm gonna walk you through it like we're texting at 2am. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

foomatic-ppd-options — it shows you the PPD options. that's the whole job. no cap. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

foomatic-ppd-options [-d=debuglevel] [ ppdfiles ]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so the foomatic-ppd-options program reads the PPD files you hand it — or reads from stdin — and decodes the PPD file so it can spit out a list of options. it's literally just a text-based version of all those other print configuration tools. lowkey iconic of it. 👑

the output format is a bunch of lines, and every line starts with a keyword, then a set of options, then the default value. for example:

       makemodel = Tektronix Phaser 350 Foomatic/Postscript (recommended)
       name=PageSize; default=Letter; options=Letter (US Letter), \
           A4 (A4), 11x17 (11x17), A3 (A3), A5 (A5), B5 (B5 \(JIS\)),...
       name=PageRegion; default=Letter; options=Letter (US Letter), A4 (A4), ...

each option starts with the name tag, then a default value (if there is one), then the set of options, then a comment describing them. and bestie — the punctuation in that comment? it's escaped. so don't come for it. 🎀

🌸 Options 🌸

• -ddebuglevel — sets the debug level. a 0 disables debug messages entirely, so it goes fully silent on you. 🤫
• [ files ] — the list of PPD files to read options from. and here's the cute part: a - makes it read from STDIN instead. 🍓

✨ EXIT STATUS ✨

foomatic-ppd-options exits with a 0 status when everything slays, and nonzero if there's an error. and when there IS an error, it also prints an error message on standard error (STDERR). so you'll know. trust. 😭

✨ AUTHOR ✨

Patrick Powell <papowell at astart.com> — we love them for this fr fr. 🫶

✨ BUGS ✨

probably. 💀 but it has been tested. so like… mostly fine.

and that's the whole vibe check, bestie. this page came from the Foomatic Project, dated 2003-09-16 — an absolute vintage queen, periodt. 💜✨🎀