Learning Unix for Mac OS X, Second Edition

Non-PostScript Printers

The lpr command can handle a variety of file types, including PDF, plain text, and a variety of image types (JPEG, TIFF, and others). If your printer does not support PostScript, you will not be able to use lpr to print PostScript files directly. This also means that you won’t be able to use enscript for printing.

However, if you’ve installed Fink (see Section 8.1), you can install the ghostscript package and run ps2pdf to turn your PostScript file into a PDF. To run enscript on the food file, convert it to PDF, and print it, use pipes between enscript, ps2pdf, and lpr:

% enscript -o - food | ps2pdf - - | lpr

The -o - switches and the pipe symbol (|) tell enscript to send its PostScript output to the ps2pdf program. The - - options and the pipe tell ps2pdf to read its input from the pipe and send its output to lpr, which sends the PDF to the printer. For more information on pipes, see Chapter 6.