html2ps(1)
NAME
html2ps - convert HTML to PostScript
SYNOPSIS
html2ps [ -2cdDFghHLnORTuUv ] [ -b URL ] [ -C string ] [
-e encoding ] [ -f file[:file[:...]] ] [ -i num ] [ -l
lang ] [ -m num ] [ -N num ] [ -o file ] [ -r path ] [ -s
num ] [ -S string ] [ -W string ] [ -x num ] [ URL|file ]
DESCRIPTION
The program html2ps converts HTML to PostScript. The HTML
code can be retrieved from one or more URL:s or local
files, specified as parameters on the command line. If no
parameter is given, html2ps reads from standard input.
Note: To avoid unnecessary network traffic, one can
rebuild an already generated PostScript file with new
options. This is done by running html2ps with the new
options, and with the old PostScript file as input (not
applicable for all options).
OPTIONS
All options have a short (case sensitive), and a long
(case insensitive) form.
-2 --twoup
Two column (2-up) output. The default is one column
per page.
-b URL --base URL
Use URL as a base to expand relative references for
in-line images. This is useful if you have down-
loaded a document to a local file. The URL should
then be the URL of the original document.
-c --check
Check the syntax of the HTML file (using an exter-
nal syntax checker). The default is to not make a
syntax check.
-C string --toc string
Generate a table of contents (ToC). The value
should be a string consisting of one of the letters
'f', 'h', or 't', optionally combined with the let-
ter 'b':
b The ToC will be printed first. This requires
that Ghostscript is installed.
f The ToC will be generated from the links in
the converted document.
h The ToC will be generated from headings and
titles in the converted documents. Note that
if the document author for some strange rea-
son has chosen to use some other means to
represent the headings than the HTML ele-
ments H1,...,H6, you are out of luck!
t The ToC will be generated from links having
the attribute rev=TOC in the converted docu-
ment.
-d --debug
Generate debugging information. You should always
use this option when reporting problems with
html2ps.
-D --DSC
Generate DSC compliant PostScript. This requires
Ghostscript and can take quite some time to do.
Note that a PostScript file generated with this
option cannot be used as input to html2ps for
reformatting later.
-e encoding --encoding encoding
The document encoding. Currently recognized values
are ISO-8859-1, EUC-JP, SHIFT-JIS, and ISO-2022-JP
(other EUC-xx encodings may also work). The default
is ISO-8859-1.
-f file[:file[:...]] --rcfile file[:file[:...]]
A colon separated list of configuration file names
to use instead of the default personal configura-
tion file $HOME/.html2psrc. Definitions made in
one file override definitions in previous files
(the last file in the list has highest precedence).
An empty file name (as in ':file', 'file1::file3',
or 'file:') will expand to the default personal
file. The environment variable HTML2PSPATH is used
to specify the directories where to search for
these files. (Note: this is only supposed to be
used on the command line, not in a configuration
file.)
-F --frame
Draw a frame around the text on each page. The
default is to not draw a frame.
-g --grayscale
Convert colour images to grayscale images. Note
that the PostScript file will be smaller when the
images are converted to grayscale. The default is
to generate colour images.
-h --help
Show usage information.
-H --hyphenate
Hyphenate the text. This requires TeX hyphenation
pattern files.
-i num --scaleimage num
Scale in-line images with a factor num The default
is 1.
-l lang --language lang
Specifies the language of the document (overrides
an eventual LANG attribute of the BODY element).
The language should be given according to RFC1766
(ftp://ftp.nordu.net/rfc/rfc1766.txt) and ISO 639
(http://www.sil.org/sgml/iso639a.html).
-L --landscape
Generate code for printing in landscape mode. The
default is portrait mode.
-m num --scalemath num
Scale mathematical formulas with a factor num The
default is 1.
-n --number
Insert page numbers. The default is to not number
the pages.
-N num --startno num
Specifies the starting page number, the default is
1.
-o file --output file
Write the PostScript code to file. The default is
to write to standard output.
-O --original
Use PostScript original images if they exist. For
example, if a document contains an image fig-
ure.gif, and an encapsulated PostScript file named
figure.ps exists in the same directory, that file
will be use instead. This only work for documents
read as local files. Note: if the PostScript file
is large or contains bitmap images, this must be
combined with the -D option. In HTML 4.0 this can
be achieved in a much better way with:
<OBJECT data="figure.ps" type="applica-
tion/postscript">
<OBJECT data="figure.gif" type="image/gif">
<PRE>[Maybe some ASCII art for text browsers]</PRE>
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
-r path --rootdir path
When a document is read from a local file, this
value specifies a base directory for resolving rel-
ative links starting with "/". Typically, this
should be the directory where your web server's
home page resides.
-R --xref
Insert cross references at every link to within the
set of converted documents.
-s num --scaledoc num
Scale the entire document with a factor num The
default is 1.
-S string --style string
This option complements/overrides definitions made
in the configuration files. The string must follow
the configuration file syntax. (Note: this is only
supposed to be used on the command line, not in a
configuration file.)
-T --text
Text mode, ignore images. The default is to include
the images.
-u --underline
Underline text that constitutes a hypertext link.
The default is to not underline.
-U --colour
Produce colour output for text and background, when
specified. The default is black text on white
background (mnemonic: coloUr ;-).
-v --version
Print information about the current version of
html2ps.
-W string --web string
Process a web of documents by recursively retrieve
and convert documents that are referenced with
hyperlinks. When dealing with remote documents it
will of course be necessary to impose restrictions,
to avoid downloading the entire web... The value
should be a string consisting of one of the letters
'a', 'b', 'l', 'r', or 's', optionally combined
with a combination of the letters 'p', 'L', and a
positive integer:
a Follow all links.
b Follow only links to within the same direc-
tory, or below, as the start document.
l Follow only links specified with "<LINK
rel=NEXT>" in the document.
p Prompt for each remote document. This mode
will automatically be entered after the
first 50 documents.
r Follow only relative links.
s Follow only links to within the same server
as the start document.
L With this option, the order in which the
documents are processed will be: first all
top level documents, then the documents
linked to from these etc. For example, if
the document A has links to B and C, and B
has a link to D, the order will be A-B-C-D.
By default, each document will be followed
by the first document it links to etc; so
the default order for the example is A-B-D-
C.
# A positive integer giving the number of
recursive levels. The default is 4 (when the
option is present).
-x num --duplex num
Generate postscript code for single or double sided
printing. No default, valid values are:
0 Single sided.
1 Double sided.
2 Double sided, opposite page reversed (tumble
mode).
BUGS
The following bugs are with respect to HTML 3.2 - at the
time of writing the current W3C Recommendation for HTML.
The support for HTML 4.0 is described in another section
of this document.
The IMG attributes ALIGN=LEFT and ALIGN=RIGHT are not rec-
ognized. This means that text flow around images does not
work. Also, the IMG attributes WIDTH and HEIGHT are
ignored.
The TYPE attribute in unordered lists UL is not supported.
A few deviations from the TABLE element as specified in
HTML 3.2: It is not possible to set the border width of a
table. The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes of the TH and TD
elements does not work correctly (in my opinion, these
attributes are bugs in the HTML specification itself!).
The CELLSPACING attribute is not implemented as described
in the specification; instead the value of the CELLPADDING
attribute is increased by half the value of CELLSPACING.
Rendering HTML tables well is a non-trivial task. For
"real" tables, that is representation of tabular data,
html2ps usually generates reasonably good output. When
tables are used for layout purposes, the result varies
from good to useless. This is because a table cell is
never broken across pages. So if a table contains a cell
with a lot of content, the entire table may have to be
scaled down in size in order to make this cell fit on a
single page. Sometimes this may even result in unreadable
output.
Page breaks are occasionally done in bad places: for exam-
ple directly after a (long) heading, and before the last
line in a paragraph.
ENVIRONMENT
HTML2PSPATH
This variable specifies the directories to search
for configuration files. It should be a colon sepa-
rated list of directory names. Use a dot '.' to
denote the current directory. An empty directory
name (as in ':dir', 'dir1::dir3', or 'dir:') will
expand to the directory where the global configura-
tion file is. The default value is '.:', that is:
search the current directory first, and then the
global one.
FILES
/tmp/usr/local/lib/html2ps/html2psrc
Global configuration file. See html2psrc(5).
$HOME/.html2psrc
User configuration file. See html2psrc(5).
/tmp/usr/local/lib/html2ps/html2ps.html
Documentation for html2ps.
SEE ALSO
html2psrc(5) perl(1) setlocale(3) strftime(3)
weblint(1)
VERSION
This manpage describes html2ps version 1.0 beta1.
AVAILABILITY
http://www.tdb.uu.se/~jan/html2ps.html
ftp://ftp.tdb.uu.se/pub/WWW/html2ps/
AUTHOR
Jan Karrman jan@tdb.uu.se