DVILJ(1) TeX Live DVILJ(1)
NAME
dvilj4, dvilj4l, dvilj2p, dvilj - convert a TeX DVI file to PCL, for HP
LaserJet printers
SYNOPSIS
dvilj [--Dnumber] [-ccopies] [-dmode] [-D] [-E] [-eoutputfile]
[-ffrompage] [-g] [-hheaderfile] [-l] [-Mflag] [-mmag] [-ppages]
[-q] [-r] [-ttopage] [-spagesize] [-v] [-Vmode] [-w] [-xxoff(mm)]
[-yyoff(mm)] [-Xxoff(dots)] [-Yyoff(dots)] [-z] [filename]
DESCRIPTION
dvilj and siblings convert TeX-output ".dvi" files into PCL (the
Hewlett-Packard Printer Control Language) commands suitable for
printing on a HP LaserJet+, HP LaserJet IIP (using dvilj2p), HP
LaserJet 4 (using dvilj4), and fully compatible printers.
dvilj4 also provides support for the builtin Intellifont and TrueType
fonts; TFM and VF files are provided in the distribution. Virtual
fonts are not supported directly by dvilj, so you must run dvicopy(1)
first, or otherwise expand the virtual fonts
All programs are generated from one source file dvi2xx.c. They are
usually called via a shell script or as a line printer filter. One such
script, dvihp(1), is included in the distribution. It provides command-
line options similar to those of dvips(1).
OPTIONS
--Dnumber
Debug according to the bits of number; see the kpathsea(3) manual
for values. Also turns on general verbosity.
-cnumber
Print each page number times (including original)
-dnumber
print in duplex mode. The option -d1 means long edge binding, -d2
stands for short edge binding. This option is only selectable in
dvilj4 and dvilj2p.
-D[-12]
Double-sided printing - see below; -D1 prints odd sides only, -D2
is for even pages, a trailing - suppresses printing of empty
padding pages.
-E Switch printer into econo mode (dvilj4 only).
-eoutfile
Send output to outfile instead of the basename of dvi file extended
with ".lj". If outfile is - (as in "-e-") the output is directed to
standard output and can be directly piped into a spooler.
-fpagenum
Print pages with TeX page numbers greater than or equal to pagenum.
-g Go mode: do not reset printer at start of job.
-hheaderfile
Copy headerfile to output before translation of the DVI file. Used
to send arbitrary commands to the laserprinter.
-l Print output in landscape mode; supported only by dvilj2p and
dvilj4.
-Mflag
Do (not) call mktexpk(1) to generate fonts on demand. -M1 and -M
are equivalent. -M0 enables invoking mktexpk(1). (This is the same
as in dvips(1).) The default behavior (i.e., if no -M option is
given) is chosen at compile-time; as distributed, mktexpk is
enabled.
-mmagnification
Specify the magnification to use. The following are available:
-m#usermag e.g., #900
-m0 equivalent to -m#1000
-mh equivalent to -m#1095
-m1 equivalent to -m#1200
-mq equivalent to -m#1250
-m2 equivalent to -m#1440
-m3 equivalent to -m#1728
-m4 equivalent to -m#2074
-m5 equivalent to -m#2488
-ppagecount
Print pagecount pages after the starting page.
-q Quiet operation: omit final statistics, etc.
-r Toggle page reversal.
-spagesize
Specify the page size:
-s1: Executive (7.25" x 10.5")
-s2: Letter (8.5" x 11")
-s3: Legal (8.5" x 14")
-s6: Ledger (11" x 17")
-s25: A5 paper (148mm x 210mm)
-s26: A4 paper (210mm x 297mm)
-s27: A3 (297mm x 420mm)
-s45: JIS B5 paper (182mm x 257mm)
-s46: JIS B4 paper (250mm x 354mm)
-s71: Hagaki postcard (100mm x 148mm)
-s72: Oufuku-Hagaki postcard (200mm x 148mm)
-s80: Monarch Envelope (3 7/8" x 7 1/2")
-s81: Commercial Envelope 10 (4 1/8" x 9 1/2")
-s90: International DL (110mm x 220mm)
-s91: International C5 (162mm x 229mm)
-s100: International B5 (176mm x 250mm)
These values are from the PCL 5 technical reference manual. If the
-s commandline option is omitted, no clipping is performed at the
bottom of the page. (But printing below the paper bottom should not
disturb any correctly behaving PCL printer.) Please remember that
the correct paper tray must be installed for selected paper size,
so use this option only if you have full control over your print
destination.
-tpagenum
Print pages with TeX page numbers less than or equal to pagenum.
-v Verbose mode: list fonts used, etc.
-Vmode
Compatibility mode. As mode, use "K" for Kyocera, "B" for Brother,
6 for LJ6 printers.
-w Omit warnings.
-xoffset
Global x-offset in mm on output page relative to 1 inch/1 inch
origin.
-yoffset
Global y-offset in mm on output page relative to 1 inch/1 inch
origin.
-Xoffset
Global x-offset in dots on output page (overrides 1 inch/1 inch
origin).
-Yoffset
Global y-offset in dots on output page (overrides 1 inch/1 inch
origin).
-z Print a test page with the page counter at end of job.
OPERANDS
If no operands are specified a brief usage message is displayed.
filename
The DVI file name that shall be converted by dvilj. It must always
be seekable.
The output file name is constructed from filename. Either an
extension ".dvi" is replaced by ".lj", or the extension ".lj" is
appended.
If filename is -, the DVI file is read from standard input and the
resulting PCL document is written to standard output. (Please
remember that the DVI file must be seekable, even if it's stdin.)
SUPPORTED TeX \special COMMANDS
"\special" commands supported by dvilj have the generic syntax
\special{key1=value key1="value with space"}
\special{key3 = value key4 = 'note optional spaces around equal sign'}
I.e., specials are a sequence of key/value pairs, separated by an equal
sign. Spaces around the equal sign are ignored. The value is either a
space separated word, or a quoted string. Both double and single quotes
can be used, alternatively. There is no support for quoting quote
characters in values; if you want both double and single quotes in one
value, you're out of luck.
The following key/value combinations are valid:
hpfile=file
Insert file at the current position. file is searched with
kpathsea(3), see below.
The file content must be valid for this printer, i.e., it should
contain PCL escape sequences or HP-GL/2 commands. If the file is a
graphics file, this typically means that the upper left corner of
the graphics is placed at the current position.
PCL absolute positioning escape sequences in file are rewritten to
be relative positioning commands; the lowest appearing coordinate
is used as reference.
hpfile_verbatim=file
Insert file verbatim at the current position, without any changes
of the file content. file is searched with kpathsea(3), see below.
This is mostly used to keep absolute positions in PCL files.
psfile=file llx=x0 lly=y0 urx=x1 ury=y1 rwi=s
Convert PostScript file file to HP PCL, by Ghostscript with device
"ljetplus", and insert the resulting graphics file at the current
position, rewriting absolute position escape sequences. file is
searched with kpathsea(3), see below.
The accompanying key/value pairs are mandatory, they can be
specified in an arbitrary order. Values x0, x1, y0, y1, and s are
integers. (x0,y0) is the lower left corner, (x1,y1) the upper right
corner of the image.
Please note: The specific semantics of this special is not known.
In particular, the rwi parameter is some scale factor; but even
looking at the source code it is not quite clear what the special's
author intended to implement here. In addition, it is unclear what
dimensions are used to specify the corners, PostScript points or
PCL dots.
If you happen to know the psfile semantics, or if you spent the
work analyzing them, please inform us at tex-k@tug.org, so that we
can update this man page with the relevant information.
dvilj-psfile-syntax=syntax
where syntax is either "dvilj" or "ignore". This is a very crude
way to tell the driver what to do with psfile specials.
If the value is "ignore", all psfile specials that are processed
afterwards are ignored, until the next dvilj-psfile-syntax special
is processed.
If the value is "dvilj", psfiles specials are processed as
explained above, until the next dvilj-psfile-syntax special is
processed.
An obvious, planned, extension is the value "dvips", but this has
not been implemented yet.
That special is not as simple as it sounds at first. Since its
semantics is defined by processing order, it is only of use if it
is placed on the same page as the psfile special. Having it once in
a file (e.g., on the first page) does not help if you print just
one page of the document -- dvilj does not do prescanning of first-
page specials like some other drivers do. (Patches would be
welcome, of course.)
comment=arbitrary text
comment arbitrary text
This causes the rest of the special to be ignored; it may be used
to add meta-information to a DVI file.
With the first form, the comment may appear anywhere in the
special. When it appears first, the processing of this special is
terminated and all other text behind is ignored.
The second form is a speciality that has been introduced for
compatibility with other drivers. If the first keyword of the
special is comment and has no value, it is taken as a valid comment
syntax, too; the rest of the special is ignored.
orientation=po
Position the page on the physical paper. The value po may be one of
the following values:
0 for portrait
1 for landscape
2 for reverse portrait
3 for reverse landscape
defpoint=n(x,y)
Define the point number n. This point can be referred to later in
other special commands to specify areas that shall be filled with
some pattern. n must be between 0 and 79.
x and y are the position of that point and have the form "?pt"
where "?" is a floating point number. The positions are relative to
the DVI page origin; i.e., coordinates increase moving right and
down, the point of origin is (1in,1in) in the upper left corner,
altered by options -x, -y, -X, and -Y, but not by \hoffset and
\voffset.
x and y can be omitted, i.e., the values 3 or "4(,)" are valid.
Then the current page position is used as position for point n.
resetpoints="all"
This undefines all points again.
gray=gray_scale
grey=gray_scale
This sets the fill mode for the next fill special, the area will be
filled with gray color. (grey is an alias for gray.) Any pattern
specification is reset.
gray_scale is the percentage of gray that shall be used here; with
0 meaning white and 100 meaning black.
Caveat: That special is actually a misnomer. PCL names these gray
scales shading patterns and they are created by placing dots in the
area. The gray scale selects how far spread the dots are. In the
lower ranges, this doesn't look very gray on close sight, but more
like a dotted background. Furthermore, the gray scales are not as
fine-grained as the value range 0..100 might make you believe. In
reality, there are only 8 different gray patterns available:
1 - 2%
3 - 10%
11 - 20%
21 - 35%
36 - 55%
56 - 80%
81 - 99%
100%
One of these patterns is selected according to the gray_scale
value.
pattern=pat
This sets the fill mode for the next fill special, the area will be
filled with a pattern. Any gray color specification is reset.
pat is one of the following values:
1 horizontal lines
2 vertical lines
3 diagonal lines, from lower left corner to upper right corner
4 diagonal lines, from upper right corner to lower left corner
5 crossed lines, vertically
6 crossed lines, diagonally
fill=a/b
Fill the area between the points a and b, according to the current
fill mode.
Point a must be the upper left corner and point b must be the lower
left corner of the rectangle. Otherwise the result is garbage.
The default fill mode is 10% gray color filling.
filename
This is a legacy special, its use is depreciated. If the special is
just one word that names an existing file, that file is verbatim
included. Contrary to other file inclusion means, the file is not
searched with kpathsea(3). You are not supposed to use this special
and we won't fix any problems with it.
It should be noted that the special parser does sometimes accept
constructs that are not valid as in the documentation above. Then, the
output is most often damaged in some way.
Searching for Included Files
Proper file include specials search the file with kpathsea(3). The
search path is configured by variable "DVILJINPUTS" and, if the file is
not found in that search path, by variable "TEXINPUTS".
Search via "DVILJINPUTS" covers the use case that one has common site-
wide graphics that shall be included in documents, e.g., scanned
signatures. Search via "TEXINPUTS" covers the use case that one has
graphics as part of ones current document.
"dvilj" is used as the ".PROGRAM" name in texmf.cnf, for all driver
variants, independent of the actual program name.
Unknown Specials and "TEX_HUSH" configuration
Kpathsea(3) has the concept of warning suppression with the
configuration variable "TEX_HUSH", please refer to its Info node TeX
support / Suppressing warnings. That variable holds a colon-separated
identifiers that specifies the to-be-suppressed warnings.
If "special" is among the listed values, dvilj does not output warnings
any more about specials that it doesn't know about. But if there is a
recognized special and if that special has an invalid parameter, then a
warning is output nevertheless, independent of the content of
"TEX_HUSH".
DOUBLE PAGE PRINTING
If the printer has a duplex unit installed, duplex printing can be
demanded with the -d option.
Otherwise, the command line option -D causes the printer to print in
doublepage mode, that is, roughly speaking, printing first the even
pages and then the odd pages of a document. If -D is used to print both
even and odd pages (-D is used without the optional 1 or 2) the
following will happen after half of the pages is printed: LJ: the
printer stops, shows message "FEED" and switches on manual feed led.
The printer continues when either the printed pages are fed into the
manual page feeder, or the operator pushes the continue button (after
placing first the printed pages into the paper tray).
If -D1 was specified only odd pages will be printed, -D2 can be used
for even pages. A trailing "-" (as in -D-, -D1- or -D2-) suppresses
printing of empty pages which are generated for padding otherwise.
The driver allows the -D option for both print-directions (front-to-
back or back-to-front printing). It tries to be clever in certain
cases: when a document has an odd number of pages it inserts in the
right place an empty page when a document starts with page 0 the driver
inserts an empty page after the 0-page when a piece of a document is
printed that starts with an even page-number it prints this page at the
backside of the first page to ensure that the odd sides are always on
the frontside. The 0-page is treated like an odd page.
The doubleside option works for all LJs, not only for the new D model
with does doubleside-printing (actually, I don't know whether it makes
much sense on the new LJ II D at all).
Caveat on the doubleside-option: When it is used frequently or on very
large files, it might become necessary to clean the printer much more
frequently.
The command line option -pX can be used to abort printing after the
output of X pages (can lead to strange results together with -D). I
personally dislike this option. The secure way of printing a part of a
document is using -f (from) and -t (to).
ENVIRONMENT
dvilj uses the same environment variables and algorithms for finding
font files as TeX and its friends do. See the documentation for the
kpathsea(3) library for details. (Repeating it here is too cumbersome.)
"DVILJFONTS"
If set, overrides all other font paths.
"DVILJMAKEPK"
If set, overrides mktexpk(1) as the name of the command to execute
to create a PK file if one isn't found.
"DVILJSIZES"
May be set to indicate which sizes of fonts are available. It
should consist of a list of numbers separated by colons. If the
list begins with a colon, the system default sizes are used, as
well. Sizes are expressed in dots per inch; decimals may be used
for "pxl" files: for example, a 300 dots per inch file magnified by
half a step comes out to 1643 dots per five inches, which should be
encoded as 328.6. dvilj tries the actual size of the font before
trying any of the given sizes.
"DVILJINPUTS"
Primary search path for include files.
"TEXINPUTS"
Secondary search path for include files.
"TEX_HUSH"
Colon separated list of identifiers that name situations where no
warning shall be output. The following identifiers are used:
checksum suppress mismatched font checksum warnings
readable suppress warnings about unreadable files
special suppress warnings about unknown specials
all suppress all warning classes above
none suppress no warnings
"KPATHSEA_DEBUG"
Trace kpathsea(3) lookups; set to -1 for complete tracing.
"GS_PATH"
On Windows, this may be the path to Ghostscript; there the default
is gswin32c.exe.
On Unix, this environment variable is not used. Ghostscript is
called as gs(1) and must be found over $PATH.
SEE ALSO
dvihp(1), dvicopy(1), dvips(1), xdvi(1), mktexpk(1), gs(1), kpathsea(3)
Email bug reports to tex-k@tug.org.
Source is at ; but for
compilation the texk build environment is needed, from
.
As of July 2007, PCL reference documentation is found at HP's Web site
at
.
At the end of that page are links to reference manuals for PCL and PJL.
In case that page is changed, here are the URLs of these documents.
All have the form
/bpl.pdf>,
where "" is the following document ID:
13205
PCL 5 Technical Quick Reference Guide. This is the 1st thing to
look up if you have questions about PCL escape sequences.
13210 and 13211
PCL 5 Technical Reference Manual (part I and II). This is the fully
detailed explanation that you need to look up if you don't
understand how the printer works. Part I is the actual manual, part
II explains HP-GL/2 and has overall tips.
13208 and 13207
PJL Technical Reference Manual (and addendum)
13212
PCL 5 Color Manual. This explains color specials for the newer HP
printers. (Not of much use today; for practical purposes we would
need to add color specials to dvilj first.)
13206 and 13209
Comparison Guide (and addendum) that documents which PCL escape
sequences are supported on which HP printers.
AUTHOR
dvi2xx by Gustaf Neumann, Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien.
dviljk fork by Karl Berry.
Joachim Schrod supplied security fixes and updated
this man page.
dviljk is currently maintained as part of TeX Live.
LICENSE
dvi2xx is public domain software. dviljk changes are covered by the GNU
General Public License.
Version 2.6p5 2022-08-30 DVILJ(1)