Printing Latex source with a2ps

a2pslatexprinting

When I try to print out latex source code with

a2ps somefile.tex

I get error messages from egrep like

egrep: Das Ende des angegebenen Intervalls ist nicht gültig

which translates to "the end of the given interval is invalid."
After that texi2dvia4ps tries to compile my tex file and fails.
I can print other source code just fine.
Any idea what's wrong?

Edit: jofels answer fixes the problem with egrep. a2ps still tries to compile my .tex file instead of pretty printing it as source code. Using

a2ps --delegate=no somefile.tex

stops it (partly) from doing so. Minor commands like \item or \phi are still interpreted instead of printed out as they are in the file.

Best Answer

The message (in English "egrep: Invalid range end") comes from a bug in a2ps.

Its /usr/bin/texi2dvi4a2ps shell script calls egrep wrongly:

Instead of

echo "$command_line_filename" | egrep '^(/|[A-z]:/)' >/dev/null \
|| command_line_filename="./$command_line_filename"

it should be

echo "$command_line_filename" | egrep '^(/|[A-Za-z]:/)' >/dev/null \
|| command_line_filename="./$command_line_filename"

As the bug is in a shell script, you can fix it easily by just editing the file.

The pattern checks if the filename is absolute (starts with an /, relevant on Unix-like systems) or starts with a drive name (e.g. C:, relevant only for Windows systems). Otherwise, the filename is prepended with ./.

Feel free to report this bug upstream or to the distribution you use.

Short answer

Use -1 instead of --portrait.

Slightly longer answer

By default a2ps tries to put 2 pages on each sheet, this works best side-by-side and landscape, even if you rotate the page a2ps still tries to insert 2 pages. The answer is to give a2ps the -1 switch which instructs it to only have 1 page per sheet (3-9 are also valid number of pages).

Vim latex: disable quickfix

_{Note: I do not have vim-latex installed. I have just looked at likely parts of the plugin’s code.}

What behavior do you want to avoid?

The documentation says that you can set g:Tex_GotoError to prevent automatically jumping to the first error after using \ll to compile.

let g:Tex_GotoError = 0

Also, the code indicates that you can inhibit the log file preview-mode window (below the quickfix window) by setting Tex_ShowErrorContext:

let g:Tex_ShowErrorContext = 0

I did not see an option for controlling whether the quickfix window itself is left open, however. You can close it manually with :cclose (which can be shortened to :ccl).

For both of the above variables, you can use a buffer-local (b:…) or window-local (w:…) instead of the global (g:…) to localize the effect if you do not want to change the behavior globally.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to print a2ps a file –portrait without being all squished

Short answer

Slightly longer answer

Vim latex: disable quickfix

Related Question