fax2ps(1) User Commands fax2ps(1)NAMEfax2ps - convert a TIFF facsimile to compressed PostScript
SYNOPSISfax2ps [options] [file]
DESCRIPTIONfax2ps reads one or more TIFF facsimile image files and prints a com‐
pressed form of PostScript that is suitable for printing on the stan‐
dard output.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-H height Use height as the height, in inches, of the output
page. The default page height is 11 inches.
-p number Print only the indicated page. To print multiple pages,
specify this option as often as required.
-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.
The default page width is 8.5 inches.
-x resolution Use resolution as the horizontal resolution, in dots
per inch, of the image data. By default, this value is
taken from the file.
-y resolution Use resolution as the vertical resolution, in lines per
inch, of the image data. By default, this value is
taken from the file.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
file The name of the TIFF facsimile image file to be con‐
verted to compressed PostScript.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
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, 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. You
can use the -p option to select one or more pages from a multipage doc‐
ument.
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 Post‐
Script specification of the black drawing operations is optimized by
using a special 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 opera‐
tor. This algorithm can, however, be ineffective for continuous-tone
and white-on-black images. For these images, it sometimes is more effi‐
cient to send the raster bitmap image directly, see tiff2ps(1). If the
destination printer supports PostScript Level II, it is always faster
to just send the encoded bitmap generated by the tiff2ps(1) command.
Diagnostics
Some messages about malformed TIFF images come from the TIFF library.
Various messages about badly formatted facsimile images may be gener‐
ated due to transmission 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 horizontal black lines
in the resultant PostScript image.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Converting the Tiff File test.tif to Compressed PostScript
example% fax2ps test.tif
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │image/library/libtiff │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface stability │Uncommitted │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOtiff2ps(1), libtiff(3)NOTES
Updated by Breda McColgan, Sun Microsystems Inc., 2004.
SunOS 5.11 26 Mar 2004 fax2ps(1)