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NAME
page - view FAX, image, graphic, PostScript, PDF, and
typesetter output files
SYNOPSIS
page [ -abirPRvVw ] [ -p ppi ] [ file... ]
DESCRIPTION
Page is a general purpose document viewer. It can be used
to display the individual pages of a PostScript, PDF, or
troff(1) or Unix's tex(1) device-independent output file.
Troff or tex output is simply converted to PostScript in
order to be viewed. It can also be used to view any number
of graphics files (such as a FAX page, a Plan 9 image(7)
file, an Inferno bitmap file, or other common format). Page
displays these in sequence. In the absence of named files,
page reads one from standard input.
By default, page runs in the window in which it is started
and leaves the window unchanged. The -R option causes page
to grow the window if necessary to display the page being
viewed. The -w option causes page to create a new window
for itself. The newly created window will grow as under the
-R option. If being used to display multipage documents,
only one file may be specified on the command line.
The -p option sets the resolution for PostScript and PDF
files, in pixels per inch. The default is 100 ppi. The -r
option reverses the order in which pages are displayed.
When viewing a document, page will try to guess the true
bounding box, usually rounding up from the file's bounding
box to 8½×11 or A4 size. The -b option causes it to respect
the bounding box given in the file. As a more general prob-
lem, some PostScript files claim to conform to Adobe's Docu-
ment Structuring Conventions but do not. The -P option
enables a slightly slower and slightly more skeptical ver-
sion of the PostScript processing code. Unfortunately,
there are PostScript documents that can only be viewed with
the -P option, and there are PostScript documents that can
only be viewed without it.
When viewing images with page, it listens to the image
plumbing channel (see plumber(4)) for more images to dis-
play. The -i option causes page to not load any graphics
files nor to read from standard input but rather to listen
for ones to load from the plumbing channel.
The -v option turns on extra debugging output, and the -V
option turns on even more debugging output. The -a option
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causes page to call Unix's abort(3) rather than exit cleanly
on errors, to facilitate debugging.
Pressing and holding button 1 permits panning about the
page.
Button 2 raises a menu of operations on the current image or
the entire set. The image transformations are non-
destructive and are valid only for the currently displayed
image. They are lost as soon as another image is displayed.
The button 2 menu operations are:
Orig size
Restores the image to the original. All modifica-
tions are lost.
Zoom Prompts the user to sweep a rectangle on the image
which is expanded proportionally to the rectangle.
Fit window
Resizes the image so that it fits in the current
window.
Rotate 90
Rotates the image 90 degrees clockwise
Upside down
Toggles whether images are displayed upside-down.
Next Displays the next page.
Prev Displays the previous page.
Zerox Displays the current image in a new page window.
Useful for selecting important pages from large doc-
uments.
Reverse Reverses the order in which pages are displayed.
Write Writes the image to file.
Button 3 raises a menu of the pages to be selected for view-
ing in any order.
Typing a q or control-D exits the program. Typing a u tog-
gles whether images are displayed upside-down. (This is
useful in the common case of mistransmitted upside-down
faxes). Typing a r reverses the order in which pages are
displayed. Typing a w will write the currently viewed page
to a new file as a compressed image(7) file. When possible,
the filename is of the form basename.pagenum.bit. Typing a
d removes an image from the working set.
To go to a specific page, one can type its number followed
by enter. Typing left arrow, backspace, or minus displays
the previous page. Typing right arrow, space, or enter dis-
plays the next page. The up and down arrow pan up and down
one half screen height, changing pages when panning off the
top or bottom of the page.
Page calls Unix's gs(1) to draw each page of PostScript and
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PDF files. It also calls a variety of conversion programs,
such as those described in jpg(1), to convert the various
raster graphics formats into Inferno bitmap files. Pages
are converted ``on the fly,'' as needed.
EXAMPLES
page /sys/src/cmd/gs/examples/tiger.eps
Display a color PostScript file.
page /usr/inferno/icons/*.bit
Browse the Inferno bitmap library.
man -t page | page -w
Preview this manual in a new window.
SEE ALSO
gs(1), jpg(1), proof(1), tex(1), troff(1)
SOURCE
/usr/local/plan9/src/cmd/page
DIAGNOSTICS
The mouse cursor changes to an arrow and ellipsis when page
is reading or writing a file.
BUGS
Page supports reading of only one document file at a time,
and the user interface is clumsy when viewing very large
documents.
When viewing multipage PostScript files that do not contain
``%%Page'' comments, the button 3 menu only contains ``this
page'' and ``next page'': correctly determining page bound-
aries in Postscript code is not computable in the general
case.
If page has trouble viewing a Postscript file, it might not
be exactly conforming: try viewing it with the -P option.
The interface to the plumber is unsatisfactory. In particu-
lar, document references cannot be sent via plumbing mes-
sages.
There are too many keyboard commands and menu items.
Displaying a PostScript or PDF file depends both on having
GhostScript (see gs(1)) installed and on the underlying
operating system providing a file descriptor device tree at
/dev/fd.
Some FreeBSD installations do not provide file descriptors
greater than 2 in /dev/fd. To fix this, add
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/fdescfs /dev/fd fdescfs rw 0 0
to /etc/fstab, and then mount /dev/fd. (Adding the line to
fstab ensures causes FreeBSD to mount the file system auto-
matically at boot time.)
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