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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 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 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 Your Variables, for more details. Note that ‘-Dfoo=’ gives foo an empty value, though ‘-Dfoo’ unsets foo.