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a2ps 4.15 released

Version 4.15 of the "anything to PostScript" filter a2ps has been released — the first release since 2007. "This release contains few user-visible changes. It does however contain a lot of changes “under the hood”: code clean-up, etc. Therefore, it’s likely that there are new bugs."


From:  Reuben Thomas <rrt-AT-sc3d.org>
To:  info-gnu-AT-gnu.org
Subject:  a2ps-4.15 released [stable]
Date:  Tue, 07 Mar 2023 18:18:48 +0000
Message-ID:  <20230307181848.IVNMI%rrt__49064.7283777193$1678227123$gmane$org@sc3d.org>
Cc:  bug-a2ps-AT-gnu.org

I am delighted to announce the first stable release of GNU a2ps since 2007!

This release contains few user-visible changes. It does however contain a
lot of changes “under the hood”: code clean-up, etc. Therefore, it’s likely
that there are new bugs. Do report them to Savannah[1], or the mailing list
please!

A big thank-you to all those who tested pre-releases, and especially to
Bruno Haible’s tireless work to promote portability: he both tested a2ps on
many systems and found lots of minor portability problems, and advised on
their solution (often, gnulib code that he wrote). Remaining problems are of
course mine!

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/a2ps


Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature:
  https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/a2ps/a2ps-4.15.tar.gz
  https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/a2ps/a2ps-4.15.tar.gz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

807667f838c29bde73bb91fae60ef98826bd460e  a2ps-4.15.tar.gz
pa3FqSIvmESKV8a162lItydD6vmjDGehNN8ILpnHZlI  a2ps-4.15.tar.gz

The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify a2ps-4.15.tar.gz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

  pub   rsa2048 2013-12-11 [SC]
        2409 3F01 6FFE 8602 EF44  9BB8 4C8E F3DA 3FD3 7230
  uid   Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
  uid   keybase.io/rrt <rrt@keybase.io>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  gpg --locate-external-key rrt@sc3d.org

  gpg --recv-keys 4C8EF3DA3FD37230

  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?grou...' | gpg
--import -

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:

  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify a2ps-4.15.tar.gz.sig


This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16.5
  Gnulib v0.1-5857-gf17d397771

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 4.15 (2023-03-07) [stable]
 * New maintainer, Reuben Thomas.
 * Features:
   - Replace the 'psmandup' utility with simpler 'lp2' to directly print
     documents to a simplex printer.
   - Remove the outdated 'psset' and 'fixnt', and simplify 'fixps' to
     always process its input with Ghostscript.
   - Use libpaper's paper sizes. This includes user-defined paper sizes
     when using libpaper 2. It is still possible to define custom margins
     using "Medium:" specifications in the configuration file, and the
     one size defined by a2ps that libpaper does not know about, Quarto, is
     retained for backwards compatiblity, and as an example.
 * Documentation
   - Remove some obsolete explanations.
   - Reformat --help output consistently to 80 columns.
   - Some English fixes.
 * Bug fixes:
   - Avoid a crash when a medium is not specified; instead, use the default
     libpaper size (configured by the user or sysadmin, or the locale
     default).
   - Fix some other potential crashes and compiler warnings.
   - Fixes for security bugs CVE-2001-1593, CVE-2015-8107 and CVE-2014-0466.
   - Minor bugs fixed.
 * Predefined delegations:
   - Remove support for defunct Netscape and proprietary Acrobat Reader.
   - Add lpr wrapper for automatic detection of different printing systems,
     including CUPS support.
 * Encodings:
   - Use libre fonts for KOI-8.
   - Composite fonts support.
 * Build
   - Update build system to more recent autotools and gettext versions.
   - Build man pages in a simpler and more robust way.
   - Document runtime dependencies.
   - Minor code quality improvements.
   - Minor tidy up and removal of obsolete code.
   - Require libpaper.
   - Remove OS/2 support.


to post comments

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 8, 2023 16:18 UTC (Wed) by giggls (subscriber, #48434) [Link]

I thought that this tool has been abandoned because of the lag of UTF-8 support.

However I am still using it occasionally piping my text trough recode before.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 9, 2023 7:39 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

I used this tool back when I used to deal with PS files, which I haven't for 10 years now. While it can read PDF it seems it only outputs PS still.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 10, 2023 1:46 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (10 responses)

The real problem of this precious tool: No support for UTF-8.

I still use it, while piping my data through recode.

Thus, a question to the readers: what command line program do you use to convert text files to a printer format (PS or PDF, don't matter)?

Bonus points if one can can configure pagination.

Extra bonus points for syntax enhancements, as a2ps does, but I don't really need them.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 10, 2023 11:23 UTC (Fri) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link] (3 responses)

Long time since I've needed to do this, but I recall using "enscript" for this purpose. Though looking at http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/enscript/ it seems the last release was in 2012, so it doesn't look especially alive either. No idea about UTF-8 support.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 10, 2023 12:08 UTC (Fri) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link] (1 responses)

For something more modern I guess there's pandoc for text->pdf conversion, and then you can use various pdf tools for e.g. n-up conversion (e.g. pdfnup, pdfjam etc. in the debian/ubuntu package texlive-extra-utils).

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 15, 2023 20:03 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

I always thought that using pandoc for that use case is like shooting with a cannon to a fly.

But if paps doesn't work sufficiently, maybe I should give it a try.

pdfnup &c are well known to me -- I'm part of TeX-Live upstream, being active in the TeX development community since 1982. But, thanks for pointing them out!

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 11, 2023 1:55 UTC (Sat) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Sadly, enscript doesn't support UTF-8 either.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 10, 2023 16:33 UTC (Fri) by mbunkus (subscriber, #87248) [Link] (1 responses)

Nowadays pandoc is my go-to for complex formats & paps for pure text (as in… not Markdown). Back in the day I also used enscript.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 11, 2023 1:56 UTC (Sat) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Thanks for the hint to paps; it's available in Debian, so I can try it out.

Sadly, enscript doesn't support UTF-8 either.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 12, 2023 14:41 UTC (Sun) by pdewacht (subscriber, #47633) [Link] (2 responses)

"paps" (https://github.com/dov/paps) will work with UTF-8, but it's sadly lacking in flexibility compared to a2ps or enscript.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 15, 2023 20:04 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for the hint.

paps seems to be the next tool that I should check; and then pandoc.
Some tasks for the next weekend. ;-)

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 16, 2023 12:48 UTC (Thu) by SiB (subscriber, #4048) [Link]

The output of yudit/uniprint looks better for me than paps. Maybe I am using the wrong options.

a2ps 4.15 released

Posted Mar 18, 2023 19:09 UTC (Sat) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link]

> Thus, a question to the readers: what command line program do you use to convert text files to a printer format (PS or PDF, don't matter)?

A long time ago, I wrote Cedilla for exactly this purpose. I haven't touched it since 2012, but it still compiles on my Debian system, and I use it regularly.

Description: https://www.irif.fr/~jch/software/cedilla/
Latest release: https://www.irif.fr/~jch/software/files/cedilla-0.7.tar.gz
Git repository: https://github.com/jech/cedilla


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