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10.1.1 Why Does it Print Nothing?

works OK, but the printer prints nothing.

There are two ways that printing can fail: silently, or with a diagnostic.

First, check that the printer received what you sent. a2ps may correctly do its job, but have the printer queue fail to deliver the job. In case of doubt, please check that the printer’s leds blink (or whatever is its way to show that something is being processed).

If the printer does receive the job, but prints nothing at all, check that you did not give exotic options to an old printer (typically, avoid printing on two sides on a printer that does not support it). Avoid using ‘-S’, ‘--setpagedevice’ (see Page Device Options) and ‘--statusdict’ (see Statusdict Options).

If the trouble persists, please try again but with the option ‘--debug’ (a PostScript error handler is downloaded), and then send us:

1. the input file that gives problems
2. the output file created by a2ps with the option ‘--debug’
3. the error message that was printed.