a2ping(1)
NAME
a2ping -- convert between PS, EPS and PDF and other page description formats
SYNOPSIS
a2ping [--]help a2ping [--]doc a2ping [options] <inputfile> [[outformat:] outputfile]
DESCRIPTION
a2ping is a UNIX command line utility written in Perl that converts many
raster image and vector graphics formats to EPS or PDF and other page
description formats. Accepted input file formats are: PS (PostScript), EPS,
PDF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PNM, BMP, GIF, LBM, XPM, PCX, TGA. Accepted output formats are: EPS, PCL5, PDF, PDF1, PBM, PGM, PPM, PS, markedEPS, markedPS, PNG,
XWD, BMP, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, XPM. a2ping delegates the low-level work to
Ghostscript (GS), pdftops and sam2p. a2ping fixes many glitches during the
EPS to EPS conversion, so its output is often more compatible and better
embeddable than its input.
Without the "--below" option, it is guarenteed to start at the 0,0 coordinate. "--below", "--hires" and "-v" are recommended options.
The page size is set exactly corresponding to the BoundingBox. This means
that when Ghostscript renders it, the result needs no cropping, and the PDF
MediaBox is correct.
If the bounding box is not right, of course, you have problems. If you feed
crap in, you get crap. But you can supply the --bboxfrom=compute-gs option to
make GS recompute the bounding box.
The name of the input file doesn't matter -- a2ping detects the file format
based on the first few bytes of the file. The name of the output file matters
if outformat is missing from the command line: then the extension of the output file determines the FileFormat (outformat).
EXTERNAL PROGRAMS
The internal file format of a2ping is PS/EPS. Everything read is first converted to PS or EPS, then processed by a2ping, then converted to the output
format.
To analyse the bounding box and other properties of non-EPS PS files (and EPS
files with option --bboxfrom other than =guess), GS is used. Converting PS to
EPS involves this analysis.
To write PDF files, GS is used.
To read PDF files, pdftops from the xpdf package is used.
Sampled input formats are PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PNM, BMP, GIF, LBM, XPM, PCX and
TGA. To read sampled input formats, sam2p is used. sam2p is a raster image
converter written in C++ by the author of a2ping.
Extra output formats are PNG, XWD, BMP, TIFF, JPEG, GIF and XPM. To write
extra output formats, sam2p and GS are used.
PNM output formats are PGM, PGM and PPM. To write PNM output formats, GS is
used.
OPTIONS
General Options
- -h, --help
- Show a summary of the usage
- --doc
- Show the man page
- -v, --(no)verbose
- Show progress and debug messages (default: no)
- Options for the Bounding box
- --(no)hires
- Use HiResBoundingBox in the input file, if present (default: yes)
- --(no)exact
- Use ExactBoundingBox in the input file, if present (default: no)
- --(no)keepoldmediabox
- keep only old, [0 0]-based MediaBox in PDF (default: no)
- --bboxfrom=adsc|compute-gs|guess|pagesize
- Method for determining the BoundingBox (default: guess)
- --(no)below
- Allow page content below and left of the origin (default: no)
- Options for graphics and fonts
- --(no)compress
- use compression (default: best)
- --(no)antialias
- render shades at outlines. Possible values: (=scale3yes =no =yes) (default: scale3no)
- --(no)lossy
- allow lossy image filters (EPS->PDF) (default: yes)
- --papersize=unchanged|force-unknown|600bpx5cm
- (default: default) (bp)
- --threshold=
- min color for 1 in 8->1 bit conv (default: 128)
- Options for debugging and changing internals
- --(no)tmpunlink
- Unlink temporary files (default: yes). Use --notmpunklink if you want to inspect intermediate files.
- --gs-cmd=path
- path to Ghostscript program (default: gs or gswin32c)
- --gs-ccmd=path
- path to Ghostscript for BoundingBox calculation (default: gs or gswin32c)
- --gsextra=GS_ARGS
- Pass extra arguments to gs
- --extra=
- Pass extra arguments to external program (i.e pdftops)
TIPS AND TRICKS
- * If your EPS contains a wrong bounding box, you can fix it by running
- "a2ping -v --bboxfrom=compute-gs thefile.eps --"
- * You can specify - as inputfile to get stdin and as outputfile to get std
- out. This works even for PDF files (which must be seekable), because a2ping copies them to a temporary file automatically.
- * If inputfile and outputfile are the same, a2ping copies the inputfile to
- a temporary location first. However, this usage is recommended only if there is a backup of the file to be restored in case a2ping doesn't produce the desired result.
- * If you specify -- as outputfile, it will be the same as inputfile.
- * a2ping respects --Duplex for FileFormat PCL5, even though GS doesn't.
- * If you have an incompatible PS that GS can read but your printer cannot
- print, just run "a2ping foo.ps PDF: - | a2ping - PS: foo.ps"
- * If you have a PS coming from Win32 (often with extension ".prn"), run it
- through a2ping. It will remove the resolution changes and the progress text printed to the terminal (which confuses gv(1) and makes some filters in the print queue emit incorrect output).
- * a2ping does antialiasing (--antialias=scale3no) of glyphs and curves when
- emitting a sampled image (FileFormats such as PGM and PPM). This improves readability of the glyphs. =yes instructs GS to do internal antialiasing, but it usually doesn't improve much. =scale3no turns off GS internal antialiasing, but makes it render everything 3x3 as big, and then scales it back down. =scale3no turns on both 3x3 scaling and GS internal antialiasing, which results in thicker lines and worse quality in general.
- * When creating a PBM file, antialiasing usually doesn't improve the qual
- ity, so it is switched off by default. But if you set --antialias=scale3no or --antialias=scale3yes, GS will render a PGM file, and the value of --threshold determines the minimum intensity for white in the final PBM.
- * If you need a bigger sampled output file, specify a larger --Resolution.
- The default is --Resolution=72. If your sampled output file is going to be really big, you should specify --AntiAlias=yes instead of the default --AntiAlias=scale3no to speed up conversion.
- * To make sure fonts are included in a PDF file generated from eps, use
- --gsextra='-dEmbedAllFonts=true -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer'.
MISC
* Doesn't depend on the filename or extension of the input file.
* Conversion from EPS to PDF: fixes glitches etc., calls gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
- * Conversion from EPS to EPS: fixes various glitches, moves (llx,lly) to
- (0,0), removes binary junk from the beginning of the EPS etc.
- * Conversion from PDF to PDF: keeps the file intact
- * Conversion from PDF to EPS: calls pdftops -eps (of the xpdf package)
- * Conversion from PS to EPS: keeps 1st page only, removes setpagedevice etc.
AUTHORS
The author of a2ping is P['e]ter Szab['o] <pts@fazekas.hu>.
a2ping is inspired by and historically based on the epstopdf Perl script modified by Thomas Esser, Sept. 1998, but his modifications have been removed
from a2ping, and also a2ping and epstopdf do not share common code anymore.
epstopdf is written by Sebastian Rahtz, for Elsevier Science. epstopdf contained extra tricks from Hans Hagen's texutil.
a2ping contains contributions from several people, see the HISTORY for
details. Thank you all for contributing!
HISTORY
- 1999/05/06 v2.5 (Heiko Oberdiek)
- * New options: --hires, --exact, --filter, --help.
* Many cosmetics: title, usage, ...
* New code for debug, warning, error
* Detecting of cygwin perl
* Scanning for %%{Hires,Exact,}BoundingBox.
* Scanning only the header in order not to get a wrongBoundingBox of an included file. - * (atend) supported.
* uses strict; (earlier error detecting).
* changed first comment from '%!PS' to '%!';
* corrected (atend) pattern: '\s*\(atend\)'
* using of $bbxpat in all BoundingBox cases,correct the first white space to '...Box:\s*$bb...' - * corrected first line (one line instead of two before 'if 0;';
- 2000/11/05 v2.6 (Heiko Oberdiek)
* %%HiresBoundingBox corrected to %%HiResBoundingBox- 2001/03/05 v2.7 (Heiko Oberdiek)
* Newline before grestore for the case that there is nowhitespace at the end of the eps file.- 2003/02/02 (P['e]ter Szab['o])
* option --below
* removes DOS EPSF binary junk correctly
* adds all 3 BoundingBox DSC comments
* reads all 3 BoundingBox DSC comments, and picks the best
* forces BoundingBox to be an integer
* adds %%EndComments and proper %!PS-Adobe-?-? EPSF-?.? header
* adds %%Pages:
* adds invocation syntax: a2ping <infile.eps> <outfile.eps|pdf>
* can convert PDF to EPS (by calling pdftops(1)) and PDF to PDF
* emulates work for PDF input- 2003/04/16 (P['e]ter Szab['o])
* added PS and sam2p support, renamed to a2ping
* sam2p and pdftops if $InputFilename eq '-';
* remove PJL UEL header from the beginning
* works for PS non-EPS files for input
* input support for PNG JPEG TIFF PNM BMP GIF LBM XPM PCX TGA via sam2p
* removes ^L (form feed) from end of EPS file
* -x=-c:rle to add sam2p options- 2003/04/26 (P['e]ter Szab['o])
* omit the unnecessary setpagedevice calls when creating normal eps
* --noverbose --nocompress supported differently
* no more option defaults :-(
* justlib2
* multi-page output with PS:, PDF:, PCL5:
* after `a2ping -pa4', file out.pcl says: `HP PCL printer data - A4 pagesize', instead of `US letter'- * justlib2-ified doesn't depend on Getopt::Long anymore
* fully supports filtering (stdin and/or stdout), PDF and PCL5 output topipe (!$$ll_zero) - * adds DSC ``%%DocumentMedia: plain 612 792 0 () ()''
* BoundingBox precedence for EPS input: --PageSize, %%*BoundingBox,setpagedevice. Precedence for other inputs: --PageSize, setpagedevice,
%%*BoundingBox - 2003/09/25 (P['e]ter Szab['o])
* --bboxfrom=adsc: %%BoundingBox overrides -sDEVICE=bbox
* improved bbox discovery
* many bugfixes
* MetaPost EPS input fixes for prologues:=0;
* a2ping -v --papersize=50,60 --bboxfrom=compute-gs t.ps t2.ps
* consistent bbox, --PageSize, /PageSize handling
* consistent --Resolution and --Duplex handling- 2003/12/02 (P['e]ter Szab['o])
* --bboxfrom=compute-gs option to fix PS -> EPS bbox (gs -sDEVICE=bbox), tuzv.eps- 2004/02/10 v2.77p fixed (P['e]ter Szab['o])
* the compute-pipe routine is now run unless --bboxfrom=guess with EPS
* added --gsextra=
* added --antialias=
* added FileFormat PBM, PGM, PPM
* separated FileFormat features to FL_* constants
* added --doc
* there is no default FileFormat (PDF) anymore- 2007/03/07 (P['e]ter Szab['o] and Frank Küster)
* various improvements for tetex2 and tetex3 compatibility
* various other improvements
* POD documentation enhancements (font embedding tricks) by Frank Küster