Bug#703508: texttopdf should be also available as a standalone application
On Wed 03 Apr 2013 at 17:17:23 +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> Le mercredi, 20 mars 2013 13.34:09, Ivan Shmakov a écrit :
> > Now that both GNU a2ps and GNU Enscript are no longer actively
> > maintained, and have as of yet unresolved issues with their
> > integration into the modern Debian GNU system (such as: proper
> > UTF-8 and Fontconfig support), the ‘texttopdf’ filter (as
> > provided by the cups-filters package) seems virtually the only
> > sensible way to perform “plain text” to PDF conversion.
> >
> > Therefore, my suggestion would be to perform whatever minor
> > modifications necessary to make ‘texttopdf’ also available as a
> > stand-alone (as in: /usr/bin) program, and provide some
> > documentation (such as a manual page.)
>
> This looks like a worthwhile suggestion, but is more of upstream realm.
The requested functionality appears to be already provided by CUPS. From
cupsfilter(8):
cupsfilter is a front-end to the CUPS filter subsystem which
allows you to convert a file to a specific format, just as if
you had printed the file through CUPS. By default, cupsfilter
generates a PDF file.
So, at its most basic:
/usr/sbin/cupsfilter input.txt > output.pdf
Being in /usr/sbin the program's existance is not immediately obvious to
a user. I have never understood why it has to live there. Is there a
good reason?
Regards,
Brian.
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