Printing to cups-pdf via command line with options?

devmoc · 06-30-2011, 01:46 AM

I'm having a hard time trying to print documents to PDF via cups-pdf at the command line and get all of the nice formatting options that the GUI print spooler dialogs provide. I know how to do "lpr -P Generic-CUPS-PDF-Printer filename" to get a general file printed to a PDF, but this method clearly is missing all of the nice formatting options that get passed when using a GUI print spooler (margins, fonts, dpi, paper size, etc..). I tried to use ps to capture whatever command is being sent by the spooler but couldn't figure it out, since I'm not really sure what commands get called by the spooler. Any help would be appreciated.

bigrigdriver · 07-01-2011, 08:43 AM

Have you tried printing in the manner of Cups command-line, specifying the lpr options for margins, dpi, etc? Here is a link to the Cups documentation for command-line printing: http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/options.html

devmoc · 07-02-2011, 09:11 PM

Thanks! That helped a great deal, I have it down to this at the moment:

Code:

lpr -P PDF -o ppi=300 -o media=Letter -o fit-to-page -o page-left=18 -o page-right=18 -o page-top=18 -o page-bottom=18 filename

One last problem, how to specify the font? The Gnome print spooler GUI allows you to set a font and font size. Thanks!

corp769 · 07-02-2011, 09:22 PM

Hello,

You could always use a2ps... From the man page:

Code:

       -Fnum Changes  font size to this value. Default values for
             font size are 6.8 in landscape mode, 6.4 in twinpage
             portrait  mode and 9.0 in single page portrait mode.
             Try other sizes if you think that these  values  are
             too small (or big).

Read the man page for more information about that command. a2ps will be your best bet man... Hope that helps!

Cheers,

Josh

devmoc · 07-03-2011, 04:12 AM

a2ps is not bad except that it doesn't appear to support word wrapping which makes it a no go for me.

corp769 · 07-04-2011, 04:53 PM

Have you tried piping them together to try to get the desired results you need?

devmoc · 07-06-2011, 02:05 AM

Piping lpr to a2ps? How do you do that? lpr wants a device specified (-P) otherwise it just uses the system default printer.

devmoc · 07-11-2011, 09:43 AM

I figured out 2 methods that work well and can be used in scripts:

Code:

enscript INPUT --word-wrap -B -o - | ps2pdf - OUTPUT.pdf

and

Code:

unoconv -f pdf INPUT

The unoconv program creates a slightly nicer looking PDF using DejaVuSansMono font. Other than that, these methods are the same; producing a formatted PDF with margins, word wrapping, letter paper size, etc..

devmoc · 07-14-2011, 03:32 AM

Just did some further research and came across something that addresses all of my needs. It's called a2pdf.

http://perl.jonallen.info/projects

It lets you change the font and font size, yay! It also does word wrapping by default, yay! Example with letter size paper and default 0.75" margins:

Code:

a2pdf --noline-numbers --noperl-syntax --noheader --nofooter --page-width 612 --page-height 792 --font-face arial INPUT -o OUTPUT.pdf

Very nice program!