FAX2PS(1) - phpMan

FAX2PS(1) General Commands Manual FAX2PS(1)

NAME
fax2ps - convert a TIFF facsimile to compressed PostScripttm

SYNOPSIS
fax2ps [ options ] [ file ... ]

DESCRIPTION
fax2ps reads one or more TIFF facsimile image files and prints a compressed form of Post-
Script on the standard output that is suitable for printing.

By default, each page is scaled to reflect the image dimensions and resolutions stored in
the file. The -x and -y options can be used to specify the horizontal and vertical image
resolutions (lines/inch), respectively. If the -S option is specified, each page is
scaled to fill an output page. The default output page is 8.5 by 11 inches. Alternate
page dimensions can be specified in inches with the -W and -H options.

By default fax2ps generates PostScript for all pages in the file. The -p option can be
used to select one or more pages from a multi-page document.

fax2ps generates a compressed form of PostScript that is optimized for sending pages of
text to a PostScript printer attached to a host through a low-speed link (such as a serial
line). Each output page is filled with white and then only the black areas are drawn.
The PostScript specification of the black drawing operations is optimized by using a spe-
cial font that encodes the move-draw operations required to fill the black regions on the
page. This compression scheme typically results in a substantially reduced PostScript
description, relative to the straightforward imaging of the page with a PostScript image
operator. This algorithm can, however, be ineffective for continuous-tone and white-on-
black images. For these images, it sometimes is more efficient to send the raster bitmap
image directly; see tiff2ps(1).

OPTIONS
-p number Print only the indicated page. Multiple pages may be printed by specifying this
option more than once.

-x resolution
Use resolution as the horizontal resolution, in dots/inch, of the image data.
By default this value is taken from the file.

-y resolution
Use resolution as the vertical resolution, in lines/inch, of the image data. By
default this value is taken from the file.

-S Scale each page of image data to fill the output page dimensions. By default
images are presented according to the dimension information recorded in the TIFF
file.

-W width Use width as the width, in inches, of the output page.

-H height Use height as the height, in inches, of the output page.

DIAGNOSTICS
Some messages about malformed TIFF images come from the TIFF library.

Various messages about badly formatted facsimile images may be generated due to transmis-
sion errors in received facsimile. fax2ps attempts to recover from such data errors by
resynchronizing decoding at the end of the current scanline. This can result in long hor-
izontal black lines in the resultant PostScript image.

NOTES
If the destination printer supports PostScript Level II then it is always faster to just
send the encoded bitmap generated by the tiff2ps(1) program.

BUGS
fax2ps should probably figure out when it is doing a poor job of compressing the output
and just generate PostScript to image the bitmap raster instead.