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General Purpose PostScript Generating Utility

3.1.2 Global Options

These options are related to the interface between you and a2ps.

Option: -q

Option: --quiet

Option: --silent

be really quiet

Option: -v[level]

Option: --verbose[=level]

tell what we are doing. At

• level = 0, report nothing,

• level = 1, a2ps just prints the total number of pages printed,

• level = 2 (default), it reports it for each file,

• above, it gives internal details.

There is also an interface made for the maintainer with finer grained selection of the verbosity level. level is a list of tokens (non ambiguous abbreviations are valid) separated by either `,' or `+'. The tokens may be:

`configuration'

`options'

reading the configurations files and the options,

`encodings'

the encodings,

`expert'

more detailed information is provided: PPD listings is exhaustive,

`files'

inputs and outputs,

`fonts'

the fonts,

`escapes'

`variables'

`meta-sequences'

the expansion of escapes and variables,

`parsers'

any parsing process (style sheets, PPD files etc.),

`pathwalk'

`pw'

the search for files,

`ppd'

PPD processing,

`sheets'

the style sheets,

`stats'

statistics on some internal data structures,

`tools'

launched programs or shell commands ; triggers the escape `?V' on (see section 3.2.3 Available Escapes),

`all'

all the messages.

When a2ps is launched it consults the environment variable A2PS_VERBOSITY. If it is set, this defines the verbosity level for the whole session (options `--verbose', and `-q' etc. have then no influence). The valid values for A2PS_VERBOSITY are exactly the valid arguments of the option `--verbose'. This helps tracking down configuration problems that occur before a2ps had even a chance to read the command line.

Option: -=shortcut

Option: --user-option=shortcut

use the shortcut defined by the user. See section 4.6 Your Shortcuts. Shortcuts may be freely mixed with regular options and arguments.

There are a few predefined user-options:

`lp'

emulates a line printer, i.e., turn off most `pretty' features.

`mail'

`longmail'

preferred options to print a mail or a news. `longmail' prints more text on a single sheet.

`manual'

make the job be printed on the manually fed tray.

Option: --debug

enable debugging features. They are:

• print the overall BoundingBox in PostScript;

• down load a PostScript debugger which helps understanding why a printer may reject a file.

Option: -D key[=value]

Option: --define=key[=value]

Without value, unset the variable key. Otherwise, set it to value. See section 4.9 Your Variables, for more details. Note that `-Dfoo=' gives foo an empty value, though `-Dfoo' unsets foo.