FAX2PS(1) General Commands Manual FAX2PS(1)
NAME
fax2ps - convert a TIFF facsimile to compressed PostScript™
SYNOPSIS
fax2ps [ options ] [ file ... ]
DESCRIPTION
fax2ps reads one or more TIFF facsimile image files and prints a com-
pressed form of PostScript 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), re-
spectively. 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. Alter-
nate page dimensions can be specified in inches with the -W and -H op-
tions.
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 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 ef-
ficient 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 dimen-
sions. By default images are presented according to the di-
mension 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 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.
NOTES
If the destination printer supports PostScript Level II then it is al-
ways 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 com-
pressing the output and just generate PostScript to image the bitmap
raster instead.
SEE ALSO
tiff2ps(1), libtiff(3)
Libtiff library home page: http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/
libtiff November 2, 2005 FAX2PS(1)
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