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Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line

From Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk>
Newsgroups linux.debian.user
Subject Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line
Date 2018-01-10 01:40 +0100
Message-ID <v6cAW-2MJ-11@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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On Mon 08 Jan 2018 at 19:21:39 -0600, David Wright wrote:

> On Mon 08 Jan 2018 at 18:18:33 (+0000), Brian wrote:
> > 
> > Unlike David Wright, I've not noticed the font quality to be poor when
> > the magnification ability (left click with the mouse) of gv is used to
> > examine characters in the PDF.
> 
> What I was using with paps (and its maximum Unicode coverage when
> diagnostic printing) is FreeMono, which appears to substitute unifont
> characters where it needs to: freemono.png attached. This shows the
> font itself, some hex blobs, and some unifont substitutions.
> So *most* of a typical file will be printed with the quality of
> $ display /usr/share/fonts/opentype/freefont/FreeMono.otf
> 
> Commenting on your other post, yes, it *would* be nice if paps were
> papdf, but I merely have    | ps2pdf - -   at the end of the bash
> function that sets the default font and margins etc to suit my
> printer. So being Unicode-aware is far more important to me than
> PS output.
> 
> ¹ attachments are scrot screenshots of xpdf set to 600%, which limits
> their crispness.

I am not attempting to dissuade anyone from using paps but trying to
explore why what appears to be a relatively simple process (text to PDF)
has so few utilities. Without a UTF-8 requirement we are awash with
Postscript programs, but not so with direct conversion to PDF. Having
said that, I have no deep understanding of either the PostScript or PDF
format, so perhaps it is more difficult than I imagine; especially when
it comes to producing an output with, for example, columns, headers etc.

However, there are utilities which can help with preprocessing a text
file beforehand.

As a UTF-8 Debian alternative to txt2pdf:

Create $HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf with the contents

  <?xml version='1.0'?>
  <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
  <fontconfig>
   <alias>
     <family>monospace</family>
     <prefer>
       <family>freemono</family>
     </prefer>
   </alias>
  </fontconfig>

(Is there anything better than FreeMono's UTF-8 glyph coverage?)

Then

  CHARSET=utf-8 /usr/lib/cups/filter/texttopdf 1 1 1 1 1 < text.txt> > out.pdf

out.pdf is not searchable, so continue with

  pdftocairo -pdf out.pdf searchable.pdf

A bonus is that searchable.pdf is about seven times smaller than out.pdf.

-- 
Brian.

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Thread

How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Jason <electron@emypeople.net> - 2018-01-06 04:20 +0100
  Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2018-01-06 05:50 +0100
  Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line john doe <johndoe65534@mail.com> - 2018-01-06 06:00 +0100
    Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-06 21:20 +0100
      Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line john doe <johndoe65534@mail.com> - 2018-01-06 22:00 +0100
        Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 21:10 +0100
          Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line john doe <johndoe65534@mail.com> - 2018-01-07 21:50 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 22:00 +0100
              Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line john doe <johndoe65534@mail.com> - 2018-01-08 11:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-08 12:30 +0100
      Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-06 22:10 +0100
        Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 01:20 +0100
          Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> - 2018-01-07 03:30 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> - 2018-01-07 03:50 +0100
          Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-07 12:10 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 13:40 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 17:10 +0100
      Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line davidson <davidson@freevolt.org> - 2018-01-09 07:30 +0100
        Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Ionel Mugurel Ciobîcă <I.M.Ciobica@upcmail.nl> - 2018-01-09 10:30 +0100
          Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-09 10:40 +0100
          Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-09 11:30 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-09 14:10 +0100
              Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 14:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Ionel Mugurel Ciobîcă <I.M.Ciobica@upcmail.nl> - 2018-01-09 16:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-09 16:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 20:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-09 20:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 21:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-09 23:30 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-10 00:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-10 00:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 21:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 21:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-09 22:00 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 23:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-10 10:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-10 10:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Ionel Mugurel Ciobîcă <I.M.Ciobica@upcmail.nl> - 2018-01-10 14:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-10 16:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-10 17:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-10 20:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-10 21:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-17 19:30 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-17 21:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Joel Wirāmu Pauling <joel@aenertia.net> - 2018-01-17 22:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Joel Wirāmu Pauling <joel@aenertia.net> - 2018-01-17 22:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Chris Ramsden <chris.ramsden@gmail.com> - 2018-01-17 22:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2018-01-17 23:10 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-18 00:00 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-18 10:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-18 13:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-18 17:00 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-18 20:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2018-01-17 22:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@transient.nz> - 2018-01-17 22:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-18 00:00 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-17 23:50 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-10 11:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-10 20:30 +0100
              Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Ionel Mugurel Ciobîcă <I.M.Ciobica@upcmail.nl> - 2018-01-09 15:00 +0100
  Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-06 16:30 +0100
    Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Jason <electron@emypeople.net> - 2018-01-07 03:50 +0100
      Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 11:20 +0100
        Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-01-07 13:50 +0100
          Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-07 19:20 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-01-07 21:30 +0100
              Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-01-08 13:30 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-08 20:00 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-01-08 20:20 +0100
            Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-08 04:20 +0100
              Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2018-01-08 10:40 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-08 19:20 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-01-09 02:30 +0100
                Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-10 01:40 +0100
              Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2018-01-08 20:20 +0100
        [SOLVED]Re: How to create a PDF-Printer from the command line Jason <electron@emypeople.net> - 2018-01-09 04:20 +0100

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