* Steven T. Hatton [Oct 21. 2001 17:40]:

I am once again frustrated with printing. It seems as if something has gone wrong with the paper size or margin settings related to ghostscript. I believe the problem is related to the postscript files I create locally as opposed to those I download from, for example, www.w3c.org. If I do something such as 'enscript rfc3104.txt -o rfc3104.ps;gv rfc3104.ps &' I see that the created postscript file has a very small left margin.

I've discovered that most of the default setting on my box are for A4 paper size. I'm in the US and for reasons beyond my control I am forced to conform to standards which are inconsistent with the rest of the world. Nonetheless, I would like to be able to print without having to read (or write) a thesis paper on postscript. the files I've discovered with a default A4 papersize are:

/etc/a2ps-site.cfg /etc/enscript.cfg /usr/share/ghostscript/6.51/lib/gs_init.ps

changing the papersize to Letterdj or letter in these does not seem to fix the problem. I can't seem to identify the configuration setting to correct this problem. Does anybody know what the problem is, or how I can fix it?

In /etc/rc.config there is an entry called GROFF_PAGESIZE. If you put that to letter, and run SuSEconfig, does that help? -- Mads Martin Joergensen, http://mmj.dk "Why make things difficult, when it is possible to make them cryptic and totally illogic, with just a little bit more effort." -- A. P. J.

On 21-Oct-01 Steven T. Hatton wrote:

I am once again frustrated with printing. It seems as if something has gone wrong with the paper size or margin settings related to ghostscript. I believe the problem is related to the postscript files I create locally as opposed to those I download from, for example, www.w3c.org. If I do something such as 'enscript rfc3104.txt -o rfc3104.ps;gv rfc3104.ps &' I see that the created postscript file has a very small left margin.

I've discovered that most of the default setting on my box are for A4 paper size. I'm in the US and for reasons beyond my control I am forced to conform to standards which are inconsistent with the rest of the world. Nonetheless, I would like to be able to print without having to read (or write) a thesis paper on postscript. the files I've discovered with a default A4 papersize are:

/etc/a2ps-site.cfg /etc/enscript.cfg /usr/share/ghostscript/6.51/lib/gs_init.ps

changing the papersize to Letterdj or letter in these does not seem to fix the problem. I can't seem to identify the configuration setting to correct this problem. Does anybody know what the problem is, or how I can fix it?

1. Once a PS file has been formatted for a particular papersize, that's it. The best you can subsequently do for a different papersize is to scale the dimensions of the whole thing so that it fits, but then the point size of the print will change. But you're stuck with that if you got the PS file from somewhere else, that created it for A4. To rescale it, use "psresize". This has quite a few options which you may want to look at (see "man psresize"), but if you have an A4 PS file and want to get it onto Letter paper, the command psresize -PA4 -pletter in.ps out.ps should do the basic business. 2. If you're using "enscript" to make your own PS files out of text files, you can at least use the -M ("media") option as in enscript -M Letter in.txt out.ps (There's also a "Letterdj" media option which will print about 1/5 inch further to the left than "Letter", and 1/5 inch further to the right, i.e. a slightly wider printing area; and also stop printing 2/9 inch further from the bottom of the paper than "Letter"; but both start at the same distance from the top.) There are an awful lot of options for "enscript" (see "man enscript") and sussing out how to make a good config file for it is not easy. The default is A4: my enscript config file is /etc/enscript.cfg and it has the lines # Default output media. DefaultMedia: A4 Changing this to DefaultMedia: Letter _should_ fix it, but in any case the "-M Letter" option should over-ride it. Further down the enscript.cfg file (around line 87) starts a list of Media Definitions: # Media definitions: # name width height llx lly urx ury Media: A3 842 1190 24 24 818 1166 Media: A4 595 842 24 24 571 818 Media: A5 420 595 24 24 396 571 Media: Legal 612 1008 24 24 588 984 Media: Letter 612 792 38 24 574 768 # HP DeskJet media (DeskJet can't print on the bottom 1/2" of the paper). Media: A4dj 595 842 24 50 571 818 Media: Letterdj 612 792 24 40 588 768 These are given in "points" (1 point = 1/72 inch), and the llx, lly, urx, ury are the coordinates, in points, of the lower-left and upper-right corners of the printing area. Check that you have these, and that they agree with the above. 3. Mads Joergensen's GROFF_PAGESIZE suggestion has nothing to do with it unless you're using groff to create PS files (which by the way is a good idea if you're doing fancy layouts and formatting, though some prefer TeX ... ); this ONLY affects the papersize used by groff and has nothing whatever to do with any other PS-generating software. 4. In your example enscript -B -j -MLetter rfc3104.txt -o rfc3104.ps psbook rfc3104.ps | psnup -2 -pletter -m.5cm -d > book.ps gv book.ps I do not find that the outer left-hand (i.e. at the bottom of the paper) prints 'squished' at all (though mine is a PostScript printer, and this may occur during the printer- driver conversion from PS to deskJet), However, it is very close indeed to the bottom-limit for DeskJets, and might even get truncated. It will certainly get truncated if you make the margin any narrower. "psnup" is, I have found, very tricky to get just right where placement on the page and margins are concerned. It has a bit of a mind of its own about exactly where to place things. I don't think what you're seeing has anything to do with default paper sizes; using command-line options to force it should sort that out, and in order to tweak it you'll need to fiddle with margins etc. until it's as you want it. I hope this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 21-Oct-01 Time: 20:08:37 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------