The dvips post-processor

By the .dvi file stage, the relative sizes and positions of the characters on the final printed page have been fixed, but various options are available within to modify the absolute size and position of the entire page image. DVI post-processor options usually allow the user to control precisely which pages of the document should be printed out (users who insist on printing all 78 pages of a dissertation after a one-sentence change are carrying on an entirely unnecessary, wasteful practice which can be spotted and will be dealt with...) and various other internal workings of the program.

The dvips program provides a large number of command-line options for controlling aspects of the Postscript production process. The more significant of these are as follows:

-r

Output is produced by default in `first page first, last page last' order. Use -r to get `last page first, first page last'.

-c<number>

Generate `<number>' copies of the output pages.

-p<number>

Make page `<number>' the first output page instead of the (default) first page of the document.

-l<number>

Make page `<number>' the last output page instead of the (default) last page of the document.

-h header-file

Include the (assumed to be Postscript) file `header-file' in the generated Postscript output in such a way as to be processed by the printer before the Postscript that describes the document. This is a `hook' for access to a huge multitude of Postscript facilities, most of which are way beyond the scope of a beginner's introduction to . For example, the generally-available header files `multi.pro' and `4xA6.pro' may be used to print an entire document as 4 A6 quarter-pages on each A4 page. This is sometimes useful during drafting, and is often used locally to generate handouts consisting of the slides from a presentation written with Sli.

The dvips program is fairly `chatty', although a command-line option (-q) is available to suppress all output other than real error messages. Terminal output from a sample run should look something like this:

  This is dvips 5.493 Copyright 1986, 1992 Radical Eye Software
  ' TeX output 1993.03.07:1431' -> guide.ps
  <tex.pro><special.pro>. [0] [1] [2] [1] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8
  <dbexample.ps>] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] 
  [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] 
  [36] [37] [38] [39] [40<../../pix/trivial.ps>] [41<wdump.ps>] [42] [43] [44] 
  [45] [46]