vpp

vpp - View and (selectively) Print PDF and PostScript

Synopsis

    vpp [options] [file]

    Options:

    -b, --batch=STRING      run in batch using STRING for print command
    -p, --printer=STRING    print to printer named STRING
    -d, --doublesided       printer is doublesided
    -r, --rc=STRING         use STRING as an rc file
    -V, --version           print version and exit
    -v, --[no-]verbose      be [not] verbose (quiet is the default)
        --[no-]view         do [not] view the document
        --[no-]print        do [not] offer printing interaction
    -h, --help              print this help and exit

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2009 Wybo Dekker (wybo@servalys.nl)

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see www.gnu.org/licenses.

Introduction

vpp displays a PDF or PostScript document (after conversion to PDF) using xpdf, gv, or any other PDF viewer of your choice). The user can use the viewer to print the document or, alternatively, leave the viewer and use vpp‘s facilities to print selected pages to a one- or two-sided hardcopy or an A5-booklet: see the section `Page selection’ for the details. Instead of printing your selections, you can also save them into PDF files.

If file is specified with a .ps or a .pdf extension, vpp will simply use that file. Otherwise, vpp will look for file.pdf, file.ps, and file, in that order, and will use the first existing file. If file lacks, standard input is used.

In any case, the first few characters in the file determine whether it is treated as a PDF or as a PostScript file.

vpp has three possible exit values:

Dependencies

vpp needs:

Options

vpp comes with several options. Before evaluating any options, vpp will try to read a system rc-file, a user rc-file, and, finally an rc-file in the current directory.

You can also set option defaults in an alias. For example:

      alias vpp='vpp --verbose'

Page selection

When you select the —print option, and you did not also use the —batch option, vpp interrogates you about the pages you want to print. To that end the following prompt appears:

    vpp command (? for help):

upon typing ? or h, vpp displays examples of possible commands:

  Command Examples:
    5       to print page 5
    5-      to print pages 5 through the end
    5-7     to print pages 5, 6 and 7
    7-5 ox  write pages 7, 6 and 5, in that order, to x.pdf
    -7      to print the first 7 pages
    5-7,19- to print pages 5, 6, 7 and 19 through the end
    a       to print the whole document
    -       to print the whole document
    a x3    to print 3 copies of the document
    x3      the same
    5 x3    to print 3 copies of page 5
    t       print the whole document twosided
    t 2-    print twosided starting at page 2
    b       to print the whole document as an a5 size booklet
    b -12   to print the first 12 pages as an a5 size booklet
  Other commands:
    e       (if called by mk) edit the tex source and rerun mk
    c       (if called by mk) rerun mk
    v       (re)view the ps/pdf file
    oxyz    send pdf output to file xyz.pdf instead of printer
    pxyz    print to printer xyz
    dx      tell vpp printer is doublesided (x=t) or singlesided (x=f)
    h       display this help
    ?       display this help
    q       quit

With these descriptions, no further explanation should be necessary, except for the following:

When twosided (t) or booklet (b) printing is selected, printing will be performed in two shifts, one for the front side and one for the backside. Between the shifts, another prompt appears:

    printer ready? then turn stack and type return

You will have to arrange your printer such that, with the printed sides up, the first page printed will be at the bottom of the stack, and the last page printed will be on top. Normally you will then have your output come out the back of your printer. `Turn the stack’ then means: rotate it over the long side of the paper and feed it back into the printer for the other side to be printed.

When you use the oxyz subcommand, your selection will not be printed but instead will be saved in a PDF file named xyz.pdf. When you use a t or b selection, you will not, of course, be prompted to turn the paper stack. Instead, the odd and even pages of your selection will be saved in separate PDF files, xyz_odd.pdf and xyz_even.pdf.

RC-files and customization

Unless the environment variable NORC has been set, three rc-files are executed, if they exist, before reading the command line options, in the following order:

You can use these rc-files to set the default values for some of the options, by quoting key = value pairs. Valid keys are:

For example:

    @verbose = true # run in verbose mode

set your PDF viewer:

    @viewer = 'gv' # set the viewer

You should use a basename here, i.e. the name of the viewer should contain no slashes, and it should be in your PATH. But you may add options, for example:

    @viewer = 'acroread -geometry 1450x1150+0+0'

xpdf is the default viewer for both PostScript and PDF; PostScript files are temporarily converted to PDF for viewing.

You may add Ruby-style comments as usual in rc files, but rdoc-style comments are not allowed.

Examples

Since vpp can read from standard input, it can be used to print (parts of) manpages. This example prints the full ls manpage first, followed by an A5 booklet of the first 8 pages:

    $ man -t ls | vpp # (xpdf shows preview and is left with `q')
    vpp command (? for help): a
    vpp command (? for help): b 1-8
    printer ready? then turn pack over the long side and type enter (^D skips)
    vpp command (? for help): q
    $

If you don‘t need a preview, because you have seen the man page already, you can print it immediately as an A5 booklet with:

    $ man -t ls | vpp --batch=b

or, to make an A5 booklet of the first 8 pages:

    $ man -t ls |vpp --batch='-8 b'

If you just want to save a PDF copy of the man page, you can say:

    $ man -t ls |vpp -b ols

Some PDF-documents, like the CVS manual (cvs.pdf), have their Table of Contents in their back instead of behind the title page. You can use vpp to rearrange such documents:

    $ vpp --batch='1,2,153-160,3-152 ocvs' cvs.pdf

This overwrites the input document. Note that any links in the file will get broken, so that is only useful for documents that have to be printed. It would have been more sensible in this case to say:

    $ vpp --batch=b 1,2,153-160,3-152' cvs

which prints the reordered document as an A5 booklet without replacing it.

You can even print or output page ranges in reverse order:

    $ vpp --batch='12-1 otest' cvs.pdf

Required files