DVIPS(1)

💖 DVIPS(1) 💖

General Commands Manual ✨ bestie, this is the dvips page, and it's a whole vibe 🌸

✨ NAME ✨

dvips — convert a TeX DVI file to PostScript 🦋

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

dvips [OPTIONS] file[.dvi]

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

🚨 THIS MAN PAGE IS OBSOLETE! 🚨 okay so the page itself is outdated, so go read the Texinfo docs instead 📚 You can read them in Emacs or with the standalone info program 🧚

okay so dvips takes a DVI file, file[.dvi], that TeX made (or some other processor like GFtoDVI 💅) and converts it into PostScript 💖 The output can go to a file or get sent straight to a printer ✨ You don't have to type the .dvi extension, it's optional 🌸 The fonts it uses can either live inside the printer already, or be bitmaps stored in PK files, or be a virtual mix of both, which is so iconic 👑

Also, if the mktexpk program is installed, dvips will automatically call on METAFONT to make any fonts that don't exist yet 🔥 literally so helpful 😭

For more info, check out the Texinfo manual dvips.texi. It should be installed somewhere on your system, hopefully reachable through the standard Info tree 🦋

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -a — 🧠 Conserves memory by doing three passes over the .dvi file instead of two, and only loads the characters that actually get used 🫶 This is mostly for machines with very little memory, like some PCs 💀
• -A — 🌙 Prints only the odd pages (TeX pages, not sequence pages) ✨
• -b num — 👯 Generates num copies of each page by duplicating the page body, instead of using the #numcopies option 🎀 This can be super useful together with a header file that sets \bop-hook for color separations or other neat tricks 🌈
• -B — 🌤️ Prints only the even pages (TeX pages, not sequence pages) 🍓
• -c num — 🖨️ Generates num copies of every page 💖 The default is 1 🌸 (For collated copies, check out -C down below 🫶)
• -C num — 📚 Creates num copies, but collated, by replicating the data in the PostScript file 🧚 It's slower than -c, but way easier on the hands, and faster than resubmitting the same PostScript file over and over 🙈
• -d num — 🕵️ Sets the debug flags 🔍 This is only for emergencies or for super unusual fact-finding missions 😭 It only works if dvips was compiled with the DEBUG option 🔧 When it's nonzero, extra info gets printed to standard error 🧾 For the maximum amount of info, use -1 🌟 Check the Dvips Texinfo manual for more details 📖
• -D num — 📐 Sets the resolution to num dpi (dots per inch) ✨ This changes which bitmap fonts get loaded, and also where the letters go in resident PostScript fonts 💜 It has to be between 10 and 10000 🍓 It affects both horizontal and vertical resolution 🦋 If you pick a high resolution (like, above 400 dpi), you should probably use the -Z flag too ⚠️
• -e num — 🎯 Makes sure each character sits at most num pixels away from its true, resolution-independent position on the page 🌸 The default value depends on the resolution 🧠 Letting characters drift a few pixels from their correctly rounded spots, and then snapping back to the true position at the start of each new word, makes the letter spacing inside words look better ✨
• -E — 🦋 Makes dvips try to generate an EPSF file with a tight bounding box 🎀 This only works on one-page files 🙅‍♀️ and it only looks at marks made by characters and rules, not by any included graphics 🖼️ It also grabs the glyph metrics from the tfm file, so characters that hang outside their enclosing tfm box might confuse it 😵 The bounding box may also be a little too loose if a character glyph has big left or right side bearings 💅 Still, this option is great for making small EPSF files for equations, tables, or things like that 🫶 (Heads up though, dvips output depends on resolution, so it's not the best for EPSF files, especially if the images are getting scaled; use these EPSF files with a LOT of care 🙈)
• -f — 🚰 Runs as a filter 🌊 It reads the .dvi file from standard input and writes the PostScript to standard output 💖 Standard input has to be seekable, so it can't be a pipe 💀 If you absolutely must use a pipe, write a shell script that copies the pipe output into a temporary file, then points dvips at that file 🧚 This option also turns off the automatic reading of the PRINTER environment variable 🎀 and disables the automatic sending of Control-D if it was turned on with -F or in the configuration file 🔥 If you want both, put -F after this option 👑
• -F — ⚠️ Appends Control-D (ASCII code 4) as the very last character of the PostScript file 🖨️ This is handy when dvips is driving the printer directly instead of going through a spooler, which is common on super tiny systems 🌸 > 🛑 NOTE! DO NOT USE THIS OPTION! 🛑 It's a hard no, bestie 😭
• -G — 🔤 Shifts non-printing characters to higher-numbered positions 🌈 This might come in handy sometimes ✨
• -h name — 📎 Prepends name as an additional header file 🎀 (But if the name is just -, all header files get suppressed from the output 🙈) This header file gets added to the PostScript userdict 💜
• -i — ✂️ Makes each section its own separate file 🍓 Sometimes dvips splits the document into "sections" to process them independently, usually for memory reasons 🧠 With this option, each section goes into its own file 📁 The new file names replace the suffix of the output file name with a three-digit sequence number 🔢 This is most often used together with the -S option, which sets the maximum section length in pages 📏 For example, some phototypesetters can't print more than ten or so consecutive pages before they run out of steam 😩 So you can use these options to automatically split a book into ten-page sections, each in its own file 📚🦋
• -j — ⬇️ Downloads only the needed characters from Type 1 fonts 💖 This is the default in the current release ✨ Some debugging flags can trace this operation 🔍 You can also control partial downloading on a per-font basis, using the psfonts.map file 🗺️
• -k — ✂️ Prints crop marks 🎀 This makes the paper size bigger by half an inch in each dimension 📏 (So you should set the paper size, either with a paper size special or the -T option 🌸) It moves each page over by a quarter inch and draws cross-style crop marks ➕ It's mostly useful with typesetters that can set the page size automatically 🤖
• -K — 🧹 Removes comments from included PostScript graphics, font files, and headers 🫧 Sometimes this is necessary to dodge bugs in spoolers or PostScript post-processing programs 🙃 The %%Page comments, if left in, often cause trouble 😭 Using this flag can break some included graphics, though, since the PostScript header macros from some software packages read parts of the input stream line by line, looking for a specific comment 💀 This option is off by default, because PostScript previewers and spoolers have been getting way better 🌈
• -l num — 🏁 The last page printed will be the first one numbered num 🎯 The default is the last page in the document 📄 If num has an equals sign in front of it, then it (and any argument to the -p option) is treated as a sequence number, instead of a value to compare with \count0 values 🧠 So -l =9 will end with the ninth page of the document, no matter what the pages are actually numbered 🔢 On the flip side, if num has .SEQ tacked on the end, the SEQth occurrence of num is used 💜 For example, -l 99.2 says to end processing with the second page numbered 99 in the document 🦋
• -m — 📥 Specifies manual feed for the printer 🖨️✨
• -mode mode — 🔧 Uses 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 live in a subdirectory named mode 🗂️
• -M — 🚫 Turns off the automatic font generation facility 🙅‍♀️ If any fonts are missing, commands to generate them get appended to the file missfont.log in the current directory 📝 You can then run that file and delete it to make the missing fonts 🧚
• -n num — 🔢 At most num pages will be printed 📄 The default is 100000 💯
• -N — 🙅‍♀️ Turns off structured comments 💀 This might be needed on some systems that try to interpret PostScript comments in weird ways, or on some PostScript printers 🖨️ Old versions of TranScript in particular can't handle modern Encapsulated PostScript 😭
• -noomega — 🌏 Disables the use of Omega extensions when interpreting DVI files 🎀 By default, the extra opcodes 129 and 134 are recognized by dvips as Omega or pTeX extensions, and get interpreted as requests to set 2-byte characters 💜
• -noptex — 🇯🇵 Disables the use of pTeX extensions when interpreting DVI files 🌸 By default, the extra opcodes 130 and 135 are recognized by dvips as pTeX extensions, and get interpreted as requests to set 3-byte characters 🦋 The opcode 255 is a request to change the typesetting direction 🧭

The only drawback is that the virtual font array will (at least temporarily) need 65536 or more positions, instead of the default 256 positions 🥺 So the memory requirements of dvips will be somewhat larger 🧠 If you find that unacceptable, or you run into another problem with the Omega or pTeX extensions, you can switch off the pTeX extension with -noptex, or both with -noomega 💖 (But please do send a bug report if you find such problems 🐛 — see the bug address in the AUTHORS section below 🫶)

• -o name — okay so this one sends the output to a file called name 📄 If you don't give it a name (so -o is the last thing on the command line), it defaults to file.ps, where the input was file.dvi 🦋 If you skip this option, whatever default lives in the config file gets used instead ✨ Here's the cute bit: if the first character of the output name is an exclamation mark !, the rest gets handed to popen, so !lpr will just queue the file for printing 🖨️ This option also turns off the automatic reading of the PRINTER environment variable, and it switches off the automatic sending of control D if you turned that on with -F or in the config file 💀 Want both? Put -F after this option 🫶
• -O offset — bestie, this one moves the origin by a set amount 🌸 The offset is a comma-separated pair of dimensions, like .1in,-.3cm, using the same syntax as the papersize special 🎀 The default origin sits one inch down and one inch to the right from the upper left corner of the paper, and this shifts it from there by the amount you give 💅
• -p num — just like -l, but it only applies to the first page in the document 🌷
• -pp pagelist — this is your page picker 🍓 You can give a comma-separated list of pages and ranges (a-b), and those get interpreted as \count0 values 💜 Any page you don't list simply won't print 😭 You can use multiple -pp options, or squish all your pages and ranges into one -pp option, whatever feels right 🫶
• -P printername — this sets up the output for your chosen printer 🖨️ It works by reading in config.printername, which can set the output pipe (like !lpr -Pprintername), the font paths, and any other config.ps defaults for just that printer 🦋 Heads up, config.ps gets read before config.printername ✨ Also, right after config.ps, dvips searches for a file called ~/.dvipsrc, which is meant for your personal defaults 💖 If you don't use -P, the PRINTER environment variable gets checked, and if that variable exists and a matching configuration file exists too, that file gets read in 👑
• -q — quiet mode, no chatter 🤫 It won't tell you about pages converted or anything like that, and it only reports errors to standard error 🙈
• -r — stacks the pages in reverse order 🔄 Normally page 1 prints first, so this flips it 🌈
• -R[0|1|2] — the security settings, bestie, and they matter 🔒 -R2 disables shell command execution inside \special'{} (via backticks `), disables config files (via the E option), and blocks opening any absolute filenames 💀 -R1 is the default: it forbids shell escapes but still allows absolute filenames 🫶 -R0 allows both 😬 The config file option is z
• -s — wraps the entire global output in a save/restore pair 🎀 > Not truly conformant, so it's not recommended! It's only useful if you're driving the printer directly and don't care too much about the output being portable 🙈
• -S num — sets the maximum number of pages in each section 📚 This one is most commonly paired with the -i option, so check out that documentation for more info 🧚
• -t papertype — sets the paper type to papertype 📄 That papertype should be defined in one of the config files, along with the code that selects it 🦋 Known types right now include letter, legal, ledger, a4, and a3 ✨ You can also use -t landscape to rotate the document by 90 degrees 🌸 If your document isn't letter-sized and you want it rotated, use -t twice: once for the page size, and once for landscape 💅 Don't use any -t option when the DVI file already has a papersize special, like the ones some LaTeX packages add, notably hyperref.sty 🙅‍♀️

The upper left corner of each page in the .dvi file gets placed one inch from the left and one inch from the top 🌷 How well this option works depends heavily on the config file 🎀 Also, running the letter, a4, or other PostScript operators makes the document nonconforming and can stop it from printing on certain printers 😭 So the paper size should avoid executing those operators if at all possible 💀

• -T papersize — sets the paper size to the pair of dimensions you give 📐 It takes its arguments in the same style as -O, and it overrides any paper size special in the dvi file 👑
• -u psmapfile — sets psmapfile as the file dvips uses to look up PostScript font aliases 🗺️ If psmapfile starts with a +, the rest of the name is the map file's name, and that map file gets added to the list of map files instead of replacing it 💜 Either way, if psmapfile has no extension, .map gets tacked onto the end 🦋
• -U — disables a PostScript virtual memory saving optimization that stores the character metric info in the same string as the bitmap info 🙈 This is only needed when you're driving the Xerox 4045 PostScript interpreter 🖨️ That interpreter has a bug that leaves garbage on the bottom of each character 💀 > Not recommended unless you absolutely must drive this printer!
• -v — prints the dvips version number and exits 🔢
• -V — downloads non-resident PostScript fonts as bitmaps 🌈 This needs gsftopk or pstopk or some other program like that to generate the required bitmap fonts 🧚 Good news, these programs come with dvips ✨
• -x num — sets the magnification ratio to num/1000 🔍 It overrides the magnification in the .dvi file 🫶 num has to be between 10 and 100000 💅 It doesn't have to be a whole number either, you can use a real number for extra precision 🌟
• -X num — sets the horizontal resolution to num dots per inch ↔️
• -y num — sets the magnification ratio to num/1000 times the magnification in the .dvi file 💖 Check out -x above for more on this 🦋
• -Y num — sets the vertical resolution to num dots per inch ↕️
• -z — passes html hyperdvi specials through to the output so they can eventually get distilled into PDF 🌐 This isn't on by default, which avoids including header files unnecessarily and avoids using temporary files when making the output 🙅‍♀️
• -Z — compresses bitmapped fonts before they get downloaded, which shrinks the PostScript font-downloading info 🗜️ It's especially handy at high resolutions or with really big fonts 💜 Heads up, it'll slow printing down a bit, especially on early 68000-based PostScript printers 🐢

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

afm2tfm(1), tex(1), mf(1), dvitype(1), lpr(1), dvips.texi, https://tug.org/dvips. 🔗

🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

Dvipsk uses the same environment variables and algorithms for finding font files as TeX and its friends do 🧚 For all the details, check out the documentation for the Kpathsea library. (Repeating it here would be way too cumbersome 🙈)

• KPATHSEA_DEBUG — traces Kpathsea lookups; set it to -1 for complete tracing 🔍
• PRINTER — see above 🖨️

NOTES

PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. ™️

AUTHOR

Tomas Rokicki wrote it, and Don Knuth extended it to virtual fonts 👑 Karl Berry handled the path searching and configuration modifications 🫶

Maintained in TeX Live! For bug reports or other correspondence, email tex-k@tug.org (https://lists.tug.org/tex-k) 💌

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Okay bestie, that's the whole DVIPS(1) page, last updated 24 October 2021 🦋💖 Go print something iconic ✨🖨️