[comp.text.tex] A dvi2ps that puts two A4 pages side by side

rhys@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Rhys Weatherley) (07/25/90)

This has no doubt been asked before, but I am not a frequent reader
of this newsgroup.  I would like to know if there exists a version of
dvi2ps (or similar) that will print two A4 page layouts side-by-side
on an A4 page (each scaled down to A5 size of course :-).

In this age of saving the environment and so on, this feature is highly 
desirable to cut down on our paper usage.

Maybe I missed something in my manual entry for dvi2ps, but does anyone
know of a solution to this?  Special LaTeX style files, shell scripts,
etc are most welcome, although taking native .dvi files that normally
print full page is the most desirable solution.  If there is a better 
dvi2ps, could you please specify where the source code may be ftp'ed from?  
We have a network of sun3's running Sun OS 4.1.

Thanks in advance for any replies this request may generate.

Rhys.

+===============================+==============================+
||  Rhys Weatherley             |  University of Queensland,  ||
||  rhys@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au  |  Australia.  G'day!!        ||
+===============================+==============================+

dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (07/26/90)

In article <4373@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>, rhys@batserver.cs.uq.oz.au (Rhys Weatherley) writes...
>This has no doubt been asked before, but I am not a frequent reader
>of this newsgroup.  I would like to know if there exists a version of
>dvi2ps (or similar) that will print two A4 page layouts side-by-side
>on an A4 page (each scaled down to A5 size of course :-).

Tom Rokicki wrote a program called dvidvi which takes DVI files
and rearranges the files for various imposition affects,
including what you requested. It runs under Unix, but probably
could be modified for other systems (Andrew Trevorrow ported it
to VMS, but didn't do a complete job of it in that the DVI files
output do not have the "normal" VMS blocking structure; he seems
to have modified his drivers rather than changing dvidvi: sigh).
There is also a port to the IBM PC which is available from Jon
Radel (P.O.Box 2276 Reston, VA 22090. He also has a very wide
selection of other PD TeX software for the PC... send him an
envelope large enough to hold 8.5x11 paper folded in half and
sufficient postage for 12 sheets of paper to get a complete
catalog).

The Arbortext DVIlaser/PS program can also do this, but is a bit
pricey for most sites.

-dh

---
Don Hosek                         TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and
dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu         production work. Free Estimates.
dhosek@ymir.bitnet                
uunet!jarthur!ymir                Phone: 714-625-0147

spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) (07/27/90)

In article <7935@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) writes:


   >This has no doubt been asked before, but I am not a frequent reader
   >of this newsgroup.  I would like to know if there exists a version of
   >dvi2ps (or similar) that will print two A4 page layouts side-by-side
   >on an A4 page (each scaled down to A5 size of course :-).

   Tom Rokicki wrote a program called dvidvi which takes DVI files
   and rearranges the files for various imposition affects,

Rokicki's program does some clever things, but I find it a lot easier
and cleaner to take the PostScript output from dvi to PS, and pipe it
through one of the programs that manipulates arbitrary PostScript
files in the way requested. Why stop at 2 up? try 6 up, 4 up, 8 up, 16
up....

I use two programs ; `mpage' (posted in comp.sources.misc vol 9),
which is written in C, and is fairly portable; and `up' which is  a
lot more configurable but is written in Perl (which you may not have
yet). Contact jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu for copies (and presumably
ftp from that site).


Either program is likely to foul up on the `traditional' dvi2ps. 
anyone still using the original program should ditch it immediately
and get dvitops, dvi3ps or dvips. dvips and mpage dont mix as
delivered out of the shrink wrapping, but Tom Rokicki tells me that is
mpage's fault. dvitops works a treat with either program

sebastian

--
Sebastian Rahtz                        S.Rahtz@uk.ac.soton.ecs (JANET)
Computer Science                       S.Rahtz@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bitnet)
Southampton S09 5NH, UK                S.Rahtz@sot-ecs.uucp    (uucp)

mark@seti.inria.fr (james mark @) (07/31/90)

Another Aussie, named Ross Cartlidge, has written a PostScript file
called multi.ps which, when prepended to the output of dvi2ps, prints
multiple "virtual" A4 pages onto a real A4 output page.  There is also
a shell script called multi that takes care of options such as number
of virtual pages per page, which printer to queue it to etc.

I don't know if the multi stuff is public domain or not.  I tried to
contact Ross Cartlidge to find out, but the mail bounced.  Does
anyone know?

-- 
Mark James  <mark@nuri.inria.fr>  or  <mark@bdblues.altair.fr>

mark@seti.inria.fr (james mark @) (07/31/90)

In article <1529@seti.inria.fr> I wrote:
>
>I don't know if the multi stuff is public domain or not.  I tried to
>contact Ross Cartlidge to find out, but the mail bounced.  Does
>anyone know?

The only reason that the mail bounced is that I stupidly didn't check
the address before mailing.  I contacted Ross; multi *is* public domain,
and is available by anonymous ftp from archive.su.oz.au (129.78.64.5)
in directory archive/ps_printing (along with other stuff).  It works
with just about any PostScript file, reducing it so as to fit any
reasonable number of virtual pages onto a physical page.  We find it
very useful here.  The distribution includes lots of documentation.

-- 
Mark James  <mark@nuri.inria.fr>  or  <mark@bdblues.altair.fr>

teege@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Gunnar Teege) (07/31/90)

In article <SPQR.90Jul27100956@manutius.ecs.soton.ac.uk> spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) writes:

      >dvi2ps (or similar) that will print two A4 page layouts side-by-side
      >on an A4 page (each scaled down to A5 size of course :-).
   I use two programs ; `mpage' (posted in comp.sources.misc vol 9),
   ...

I'm using mpage in combination with dvitps by S.v.Bechtolsheim. The
problem was, that the scaling down done by Postscript made the smaller
fonts look not very nice. So I generated all the fonts scaled down by
0.707... with metafont. It is possible to call dvitps in a way that it
uses those fonts without changing the scale, so that the output can be
scaled by mpage. The call is
  dvitps -q -m  707 -C -A <dir with special fonts scaled by 0.707> \
  -Y 1.55 -X 1.55 <dvi-file> | mpage -s -b -A -2 -P
(we have Version 2.16 of dvitps; changed to produce A4 output as default)
This gives excellent results even on 300dpi printers

Gunnar Teege   Inst. fuer Informatik, Technische Universitaet Muenchen
               PO-Box 202420, 8000 Muenchen 2,  West-Germany
teege@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de        +49 89 2105 8179
teege%lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de@{unido.uucp,relay.cs.net,unido.bitnet}

rossc@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Ross Cartlidge) (08/05/90)

In article <1531@seti.inria.fr> mark@seti.inria.fr (Mark James) writes:
...
>>
>The only reason that the mail bounced is that I stupidly didn't check
>the address before mailing.  I contacted Ross; multi *is* public domain,
>and is available by anonymous ftp from archive.su.oz.au (129.78.64.5)
>in directory archive/ps_printing (along with other stuff).  It works
>with just about any PostScript file, reducing it so as to fit any
>reasonable number of virtual pages onto a physical page.  We find it
>very useful here.  The distribution includes lots of documentation.
...

Due to a temporary problem with my ftpd daemon this stuff was not fetchable.
It should work now. Try extro.ucc.su.oz.au(129.78.64.1) if archive.su.oz.au
doesn't work.

Sorry about the stuff up
--
________________________________________________________________________
Ross Rodney Cartlidge			    |   rossc@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
University Computing Service, H08	    |   Phone:     +61 2 6923497
University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia   |   FAX:       +61 2 6606557