In terminal mode, when I direct the output of a simple text file to my printer, the font is too large and the margins need adjustment.

For example, if you do

cat textfile | lpr

or lpr textfile

you might not like the font, font size or margins.

The question holds for any printer. I did not find any place place to adjust defults in the CUPS setup program.

I've searched the manpages, forums and Google for an answer. No luck.

Please tell me how I can control the default fonts and margins of a printer accessed in terminal mode.

Thank you.

Use enscript instead of lpr. You can specify font name and size, margins, borders, etc.

I wasn't aware of enscript until you mentioned it.

enscript might give me the controls I want, but it seems to have an encoding incompatibility for me.

For example, do a short command such as

man info | enscript

and you might see some printed characters that don't translate properly.

For a better example, try printing one iteration of top:

top -n1 | enscript

and you get mostly unreadable output.

I tried playing with enscript's -X encoding options and couldn't find one that worked.

Please share your thoughts with me.