tops

This is my "convert-anything-to-PostScript-or-something-else" program that glues together dozens of conversion programs. It recognizes automatically a large number of input formats, currently including plain text, PostScript (of course), PDF, TeX DVI, troff/ditroff/gtroff output, xfig output, and a number of image formats (Sun raster, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PCX, XWD, RLE, FITS, G3 FAX, TARGA, BMP, PPM, PGM, PPM, NCAR-Graphics type CGM, binary CGM, and a few others). It uncompresses the input if necessary. Then it determines the type of input and invokes an appropriate converter. Pages of multi-page documents can be rearranged and re-sorted to produce "n-up" or booklet style output. The program has also options to produce output other than PostScript (e.g., to feed non-PostScript printers or to launch viewers).

The program has a configuration file where you can enter the converters you have. If you have difficulties to get it running, you might consider alternative programs from the net, which are somewhat similar in scope, but less powerful.

The man page is also available.

Tops is used by all of my recent printer scripts and filters for the printer spooling system.

If you want to install tops, you can download a copy via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.kis.uni-freiburg.de/pub/hammer as file tops.tgz (packed with tar and compressed with gzip). But please keep in mind that I run this only on Suns and do not have the time or even possibility to check its portability to other systems. Also remember that tops does not do any conversions by itself, but rather glues together other programs that I collected from the net and that are not included in my package. You should use archie to find current versions of those programs that you need, and then obtain and install them before you configure and compile tops. In any case, you need gzip to uncompress input, a good text-to-PostScript program such as a2ps or GNU enscript, and the psutils package for doing page rearrangements. If you work with the TeX typesetting system, you should obtain the programs dvips, dvidvi, and the dviutils package. And if you work with various image formats, you should obtain either netpbm or pbmplus, and if possible a number of other packages such as imagemagick.


Oct 21, 1996   Reiner Hammer   <hammer@kis.uni-freiburg.de>