7.5.4. Beyond Plain Text: Printing Options

The lpr command supports a number of options that control formatting text, converting graphic and other file formats, producing multiple copies, handling of the job, and more. This section describes the options.

7.5.4.1. Formatting and Conversion Options

The following lpr options control formatting of the files in the job. Use these options if the job does not contain plain text or if you want plain text formatted through the pr utility.

For example, the following command prints a DVI file (from the TeX typesetting system) named fish-report.dvi to the printer named bamboo:

lpr -P bamboo -d fish-report.dvi

Note: All of these options except -p and -T require conversion filters installed for the destination printer. For example, the -d option requires the DVI conversion filter. Section Conversion Filters gives details.

-c

Print cifplot files.

-d

Print DVI files.

-f

Print FORTRAN text files.

-g

Print plot data.

-i number

Indent the output by number columns; if you omit number, indent by 8 columns. This option works only with certain conversion filters.

Note: Do not put any space between the -i and the number.

-l

Print literal text data, including control characters.

-n

Print ditroff (device independent troff) data.

-p

Format plain text with pr before printing. See pr(1) for more information.

-T title

Use title on the pr header instead of the file name. This option has effect only when used with the -p option.

-t

Print troff data.

-v

Print raster data.

Here is an example: this command prints a nicely formatted version of the ls manual page on the default printer:

zcat /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz | troff -t -man | lpr -t

ls manual page and passes it to the troff command, which formats that source and makes GNU troff output and passes it to lpr, which submits the job to the LPD spooler. Because we used the -t option to

lpr, the spooler will convert the GNU troff output into a format the default printer can understand when it prints the job.

7.5.4.2. Job Handling Options

The following options to lpr tell LPD to handle the job specially:

-# copies

Produce a number of copies of each file in the job instead of just one copy. An administrator may disable this option to reduce printer wear-and-tear and encourage photocopier usage. See section Restricting Multiple Copies.

This example prints three copies of parser.c followed by three copies of parser.h to the default printer:

lpr -#3 parser.c parser.h

-m

Send mail after completing the print job. With this option, the LPD system will send mail to your account when it finishes handling your job. In its message, it will tell you if the job completed successfully or if there was an error, and (often) what the error was.

-s

Do not copy the files to the spooling directory, but make symbolic links to them instead.

If you are printing a large job, you probably want to use this option. It saves space in the spooling directory (your job might overflow the free space on the filesystem where the spooling directory resides). It saves time as well since LPD will not have to copy each and every byte of your job to the spooling directory.

There is a drawback, though: since LPD will refer to the original files directly, you cannot modify or remove them until they have been printed.

Note: If you are printing to a remote printer, LPD will eventually have to copy files from the local host to the remote host, so the -s option will save space only on the local spooling directory, not the remote. It is still useful, though.

-r

Remove the files in the job after copying them to the spooling directory, or after printing them with the -s option. Be careful with this option!

7.5.4.3. Header Page Options

These options to lpr adjust the text that normally appears on a job's header page. If header pages are suppressed for the destination printer, these options have no effect. See section Header Pages for information about setting up header pages.

-C text

Replace the hostname on the header page with text. The hostname is normally the name of the host from which the job was submitted.

-J text

Replace the job name on the header page with text. The job name is normally the name of the first file of the job, or ``stdin'' if you are printing standard input.

-h

Do not print any header page. Note: At some sites, this option may have no effect due to the way header pages are generated. See Header Pages for details.