.\" Copyright (c) 2000
.\"     Andreas Klemm <andreas@apsfilter.org>.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" $ApsCVS: src/apsfilter/man/apsfilter.1.in,v 1.23.2.11 2002/11/10 13:02:40 andreas Exp $
.\"                                                                           
.Dd May 19, 2001
.Dt APSFILTER 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm apsfilter
.Nd magic print filter with auto file type recognition
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm lpr
.Op Fl P Ns Ar printer
.Op Fl C Ar option1:...:optionN
.Op Ar file ...
(lpd style)
.Nm lpr
.Op Fl P Ns Ar printer
.Op Fl Z Ar option1:...:optionN
.Op Ar file ...
(LPRng style)
.Nm lp
.Op Fl d Ar printer
.Op Fl o Ar option1:...:optionN
.Op Ar file ...
(Solaris style)
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm Apsfilter
is a magic print filter which allows you to print different
document types
.Dq automagically
without having to convert them manually
into a document format which is understood by your printer hardware.
.Pp
.Nm Apsfilter
uses third-party software to convert every supported
file type into PostScript (PS) first. If you have a real PS printer, the
data stream is then sent directly to the PS printer, otherwise it is
piped through the famous PS interpreter
.Xr gs 1
which supports a wide range of output devices.
.Pp
Thus the question whether a particular printer is supported by
.Nm
is actually the question of it either understanding PS directly, or
being supported by
.Xr gs 1
in some way (possibly using some emulation of another printer's
software interface, like Epson's ESC/P2 or HP's PCL).
.Pp
Another important thing to remember is that the required driver support has
to be present in the installed
.Xr gs 1
binary.
.Ic gs -h
lists (among others) which drivers are currently compiled in. SETUP warns
when a selected driver is missing and guides in choosing another driver.
.Pp
The
.Em FreeBSD ports collection
offers an easy and comfortable framework for FreeBSD users
to configure and install apsfilter,
.Xr gs 1 ,
gs third-party driver and filter programs for their personal needs.
.Pp
The
.Nm
script is designed to avoid temporary files as much as
possible. So it is very efficient in use and doesn't fill up
filesystems even when printing large printjobs in high resolution
and best print quality.
.Pp
.Nm Apsfilter
offers a wide range of customization options through config files and
.Xr lpr 1
command line options, see below.
.Ss Advantages over other magic filters
.Nm Apsfilter
and its SETUP is completely written in a script language (see
.Xr sh 1 ).
So it is easy to understand and modify even for users and admins who
are quite new to the Unix business.
.Pp
.Nm Apsfilter
is highly customizable and its developement since 1994 has shown that it
scales very well with the still growing demand of additional features.
.Ss Supported printers
Apsfilter supports locally connected serial, parallel and USB printers.
.Pp
Remote printing cababilities: Unix remote printing (lpd protocol),
printing to an AppleTalk remote printer via
.Xr pap 1
as well as Windows remote printing via SAMBAs
.Xr smbclient 1
on Windows 95/98/NT/2000 printer as guest user or using a real password
protected Windows account.
.Pp
.Nm Apsfilter
\&'s
SETUP utility supports in installing all supported printer types,
no matter if local or remote printer,
into the printer capability database
.Pa @printcap@ .
.Ss Supported file types
ar, arc, arj, ASCII, BMP, CAB, cpio, DATA, DVI, FBM, FIG, FITS, GIF,
Group 3 FAX, HTML, IFF ILBM, JPEG, Kodak Photo CD (PCD), LHA, MGR, MIFF,
PAM, PGM, PBM, PNM, PPM, PDF, PNG, Postscript (PS), RAR, RLE, RPM, SGI,
Sketch, Sunraster, TAR, Targa (TGA), TIFF ROFF, WMF, WorPerfect graphics,
XCF, X Pixmap (XPM), X Window dump (XWD), ZIP, ZOO.
Note that actual support depends on the installed filter programs.
.Ss Installation
Extract the tarball and execute
.Ic ./configure
in the 
.Nm apsfilter
directory (maybe with some options; use
.Ic ./configure --help
to see a listing).
.Pp
After that, login as root and call
.Ic make install ;
then you can set up printers with
.Ic @datadir@/apsfilter/SETUP .
.Pp
SETUP adds the printer to the @printcap@ database to make it available to the
.Xr lpd 8
print spooler, and configures
.Nm
for operation with that printer.
.Pp
After successfull installation, SETUP remembers its previous configuration
settings in a file called
.Pa SETUP.cfg .
.Ss Command line options
Several command line options to
.Nm apsfilter
are available which allow the user to influence the printing quality,
color mode, paper size etc. The
.Em handbook
includes a detailed listing.
.Pp Here a short description of options:
.Bl -tag -width XX_THIS_MUCH_SPACE_XX
.It Nm draft
Draft quality.
.It Nm lo|low
Low quality.
.It Nm med|medium
Medium quality.
.It Nm hi|high
High quality.
.It Nm photo
Photo quality.
.It Nm uni|bi
Uni-/bi-directional sweeps.
.It Nm plain
Plain paper.
.It Nm coated
Coated (inkjet) paper.
.It Nm glossy
Glossy paper.
.It Nm premium
Premium (photo) paper.
.It Nm trans
Transparencies.
.It Nm color|colour
Color printing.
.It Nm gray|grey
Gray printing.
.It Nm mono
B/W printing.
.It Nm auto
Automatic filetype recognition and data conversion.
.It Nm ascii
Force printing as ASCII document. For example to print Postscript
source code without actually interpreting it.
.It Nm raw
Pass-through mode, your print data won't be changed by any filter.
.It Nm a3|a4|legal|ledger|tabloid
Paper size.
.It Nm a2ps|mpage|enscript|recode
Text file filter to use, when printing ASCII documents.
.It Nm tray0...tray9
Paper feed tray number.
.It Nm pretty=N
highlight level for pretty-printing (N=0,1,2)
.It Nm header|noheader
Whether you want headers in your text prints.
.It Nm border|noborder
Whether you want borders in your text prints.
.It Nm 1pps|2pps|4pps|8pps
Pages per sheet.
.It Nm landscape|portrait
Paper orientation.
.It Nm book
Output pages in "book" format, implies "2pps,duplex,shortbind"
.It Nm duplex|simplex
Whether to use duplex mode or not.
.It Nm shortbind|longbind
Paper binding edge.
.It Nm copies=N
Number of copies.
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Dl lpr -C high:color:glossy file.gif tex.dvi.gz file.html ...
.Pp
prints some files of different types no matter whether compressed or not
on the Unix default printer (see
.Xr lpr 1 ).
.Pp
The
.Fl C
option to the
.Ic lpr
command sets additional ghostscript driver-specific options.  Here,
.Ql high
means
.Em high resolution
(e. g. 600 dpi for an HP Printer using gs's
.Dq cdj850
printer driver),
.Em color output
(e.g. 32 bits per pixel), and the paper type is set to
.Em glossy paper
.
.Pp
.Dl lpr -C duplex somefile
.Pp
enables
.Em pseudo duplex printing
by halting the print queue after printing a documents even pages and so
giving the user a chance to flip paper and restart printing after executing
a special user command on the command line.
.Pp
User gets a notification mail containing a session oriented magic
.Em wakeup command
and
.Em key
which restarts printing of the odd pages of the print job.
.Pp
The so called
.Em magic command
makes sure that only the initiator of the print job is able to
restart printing after reinserting the paper.
.Pp
.Em Beware,
if you have nasty users, this can cause print jobs to
hang, filling up the print queue and at least the /var file system.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width @docdir@/apsfilter/handbook.html -compact
.It Pa @printcap@
printer capability data base
.It Pa @datadir@/apsfilter/bin/apsfilter
apsfilter script
.It Pa @datadir@/apsfilter/SETUP
printer installation script, creates/updates @printcap@
.It Pa @datadir@/apsfilter/SETUP.cfg
saved settings from last printer setup
.It Pa @docdir@/apsfilter/handbook.html
the apsfilter handbook in HTML format
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/
configuration directory
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/apsfilterrc
global configuration file
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/apsN/
printer specific configuration directory
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/apsN/apsfilterrc
printer specific configuration file
.It Pa $HOME/.apsfilter/apsfilterrc.apsN
user definable printer specific configuration file
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/apsN/smbclient.conf
smbclient config file for printing on Windows remote printer
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/apsN/pap.conf
pap config file for printing on AppleTalk printer
.It Pa @sysconfdir@/apsfilter/apsN/lpr.conf
config file for remote printer that needs special treatment
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr aps2file 1 ,
.Xr apsfilter-bug 1 ,
.Xr apspreview 1 ,
.Xr gs 1 ,
.Xr gs-hpdj 1 ,
.Xr lpr 1 ,
.Xr smbclient 1 ,
.Xr apsfilterrc 5 ,
.Xr printcap 5 ,
.Xr lpd 8
.Sh BUGS
See apsfilter software center -
.Li http://www.apsfilter.org/
- for new versions, bugfixes and known bugs.
.Pp
Please use the new tool
.Xr apsfilter-bug 1
to release bug- or problem reports. It automatically presents you a
.Nm form
in an editor window which asks you some standard questions.
If you save and quit the editor session, then this report is
sent automatically via 
.Nm e-mail
to the proper apsfilter mailinglist.
.Pp
If apsfilter fails to print something or prints it in a way
you wouldn't expect and you want to report an apsfilter error
then please save the debugging output of one print session
using the new
.Xr aps2file 1
utility by typing
.Nm aps2file -D -Z options file > /dev/null 2> file.debug
and including the debugging output in the file
.Nm file.debug
into the edit session of the
.Nm apsfilter-bug
utility, so that it is included into the mail to the apsfilter
mailinglist.
.Pp
Please note that you need to run /bin/sh (Bourne Shell), bash
or a compatible shell, so that the above mentioned output
redirection works. Under C-shell (/bin/csh) or tcsh it would't
work. If you don't know, then simply make sure you use the
Bournce shell by typing
.Nm /bin/sh
or
.Nm bash ,
then you should have no problems with redirection of
.Nm stdout
and
.Nm stderr
(> /dev/null 2> file.debug).
.Sh DOCUMENTATION
See official apsfilter homepage
.Bl -tag -width XXXXXXXXXXXXXTHIS_MUCH_SPACEXXXXXXXXXXX -compact
.It Pa http://www.apsfilter.org/handbook.html
Apsfilter Handbook including the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
.Sh USER FORUM
Please send questions to the official apsfilter help channel
.Ic apsfilter-help@apsfilter.org .
The above section
.Nm BUGS
and the file
.Ic HOWTO-BUGREPORTS
tells you how to report bugs.
If you want to know how to troubleshoot your apsfilter installation,
please read the manpage
.Xr aps2file 1
and
.Xr apsfilter-bug 1
as well as the
.Ic Apsfilter Handbook
carefully.
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
manpage appeared first in apsfilter V 5.4.0.