PAPERSPECS(5)

📄 paperspecs 📄

okay bestie, welcome to paperspecs from the File Formats Manual 🎀 this is the file that tells your system what paper sizes exist, and honestly it's giving organization 💅

💖 NAME 💖

paperspecs is the paper size specifications file. Basically, the list of paper sizes, all in one place ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

It's a CSV format list of the paper size specs used by paper. Each line has these fields, in this exact order:

NAME,WIDTH,HEIGHT,UNIT

For the units, you've got three options: pt (PostScript points), mm, and in 📏

⚠️ a size can be defined more than once, but only the first definition is normally used. So the user's paperspecs file wins over the system file (see FILES below) 😤 main character energy for your own list 👑

Multiple definitions are also a thing, and it's lowkey genius. They let inexact definitions get looked up by size 🧠 For example, the LC_PAPER mechanism on some systems defines paper sizes in whole millimetres, so you end up with a Letter size that doesn't exactly match the inches definition. Iykyk 🙈

🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/paperspecs — the system list of paper sizes.
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/paperspecs — the user's own list of paper sizes. This gets prepended to the system list, so it goes first ✨

💀 BUGS 💀

🚨 the CSV format is restricted, so quotes are not allowed. That means fields cannot be escaped. no cap, this one is a little rough 😭

🧚 CREDITS 🧚

The original list of paper names came from Ghostscript 3.68's gs_stadt.ps. Respect to the OG source 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Reuben Thomas, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>, the real one 💜

🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

• paper(1) — the command that actually uses all of this. go check it out 🔥

that's the tea, bestie 🫶 PAPERSPECS(5), last updated 11 January 2014. stay iconic 💅🌈