This is a2x's README. A2x converts ascii to ps and different formats using GhostScript. Its heart is a2x.ps, a PostScript program, which does most of the work. You may choose upon paper formats, orientations, fonts, their sizes, number of columns; you may print only odd/even pages, or just count the number of pages, the output would have; you may print the page's number, the file's name and current date on top of each page; it handles tabs and backspaces, supports different character sets and more... Please, read the manual page (nroff -man a2x.1 | less). It describes how to install and use a2x in detail. I hope, this for you. Christoph %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Note: This is NOT an official release! This is a pre 1.0. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Changes: 0.1 --> 0.2 (08/23/94) ------------------------------ * added the a2x script (it's bad, but seems to work) * wrote a2xdoc 0.2 --> 0.3 (09/04/94) ------------------------------ * minor bug fixes * added head=name option 0.3 --> 0.4 (09/28/94) ------------------------------ * a2x.ps now handles tabs 0.4 --> 0.9 (11/17/94) ------------------------------ * a2x.ps now handles backspaces with -bs option * added -man option for printing manpages * added -nx option to do x lines per page printing * a2x.ps now runs with real PostScript printers :-) * rewrote a2x script * added manual page (replaces a2xdoc) * replaced -head[=xxx] option by -title[=xxx] and -date options 0.9 --> 0.91 * fixed backspace handling: a sequence matching x\by(\b.)* is treated as x\by now. eg aaaa22222xxxx is treated as aa22xx 0.91 --> 0.92 * INCOMPATIBILITY CHANGE: -num now numbers columns, rather than physical pages. new option -pagenum acts like previous -num. * added options -O, -E to print odd, even columns only. * added option -R to print columns on each page in reverse order. * new option -1up is the same as -p -c1. * new option -2up is similar to -l -c2, except that with -2up columns are separeted by leftmargin+rightmargin, instead of colsep. * added options -D for Duplex, -T for Tumble printing, if your PS device supports this (use both, -D and -T for tumble). These are untested. 0.92 --> 1.0 (10/05/96) ------------------------------ * updated man page. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
