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1# $Id$
2
3pkpgcounter : a generic Page Description Language parser
4
5(c) 2003-2009 Jerome Alet <alet@librelogiciel.com>
6This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
7it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
8the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
9(at your option) any later version.
10
11This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
12but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
13MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
14GNU General Public License for more details.
15
16You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
17along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
18
19=============================================================================
20
21pkpgcounter is a generic Page Description Language parser which can either
22compute the number of pages in a document, or compute the percent of
23ink coverage needed to print each page, in different colorspaces.
24
25pkpgcounter currently recognizes the following document formats :
26
27        - PostScript (both DSC compliant and binary)
28
29        - PDF
30
31        - PCL3/4/5
32
33        - PCLXL (aka PCL6)
34
35        - DVI
36
37        - OpenDocument (ISO/IEC DIS 26300)
38
39        - Microsoft Word (c) (tm) (r) (etc...)
40
41        - Plain text
42
43        - TIFF
44
45        - Several other image formats
46
47        - ESC/P2
48
49        - Zenographics ZjStream
50
51        - Samsung QPDL (aka SPL2)
52
53        - Samsung SPL1
54
55        - ESC/PageS03
56
57        - Brother HBP
58
59        - Brother XL2HB
60
61        - Hewlett-Packard Lightweight Imaging Device Interface Language
62
63        - Structured Fax
64
65        - Canon BJ/BJC
66
67        - ASCII PNM (Netpbm)
68
69The eleven latter ones, as well as some TIFF documents, are currently
70only supported in page counting mode.
71
72By default, when launched pkpgcounter prints on its standard output
73a single integer representing the total number of pages in all the
74files which filenames you've passed on the command line.
75
76With no argument, or with a single dash in non-option arguments,
77pkpgcounter reads datas to parse from its standard input in addition
78to other non-options arguments which are treated as filenames
79representing the files to parse.
80
81See pkpgcounter --help for details and examples.
82
83=============================================================================
84
85Installation :
86--------------
87
88  0 - Download pkpgcounter from :
89
90        http://www.pykota.com/software/pkpgcounter/download
91
92      and extract it :
93
94        $ tar -zxf pkpgcounter-x.yy.tar.gz
95
96        where x.yy is pkpgcounter' version number.
97
98  1 - Run the installation script :
99
100        $ python setup.py install
101
102      This will usually install the pkpgcounter into /usr/bin and
103      the library into /usr/lib/python2.?/site-packages/pkpgpdls/
104
105  2 - Use pkpgcounter :
106
107      $ pkpgcounter file1.ps file2.pclxl ... <fileN.escp2
108
109      pkpgcounter will display the total size in pages of all the files
110      passed on the command line.
111
112      $ pkpgcounter --colorspace bw --resolution 150 file1.ps
113
114      Will output the percent of black ink needed on each page of
115      the file1.ps file rendered at 150 dpi.
116
117  3 - That's all !
118
119DEPENDENCIES :
120
121  Most of the time, pkpgcounter only depends on the presence of :
122
123  - The Python Imaging Library (python-imaging)
124
125  But, depending on the file formats you plan to work with, and on the
126  accounting mode you want to use (pages vs ink), you may need to install
127  some or all of the additional software listed below. Usually, if one is
128  needed then pkpgcounter will complain. So your best bet is probably
129  to NOT INSTALL anything until pkpgcounter asks you to do so on its
130  standard error stream. Here's the list of software which may be needed
131  for some operations with pkpgcounter :
132
133  - GhostScript (gs)
134
135  - The X Virtual Frame Buffer (xvfb)
136
137  - The X authority file utility xauth (xbase-clients)
138
139  - The dvips converter from TeX DVI to PostScript (tetex-bin)
140
141  - The ImageMagick image manipulation toolkit (imagemagick)
142
143  - The AbiWord word processor (abiword)
144
145  - The GhostPCL/GhostPDL's pcl6 converter from PCL to PostScript
146
147=============================================================================
148
149Troubleshooting :
150-----------------
151
152  If pkpgcounter gives incorrect results to you, please make an incorrectly
153  parsed data file available to us on some website, and tell us which
154  driver was used, how many pages are in the file, and any additional
155  information you think is relevant.
156
157=============================================================================
158
159Before pkpgcounter v1.86, the PCL3/4/5 parser was a Python backport of an early
160release of the PCLCount software by Eduardo Gielamo Oliveira and Rodolfo Broco
161Manin, available from :
162
163    http://www.fea.unicamp.br/pclcount/
164
165Their software is distributed under either the terms of a BSD-like license,
166or the terms of the GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation.
167
168Beginning with pkpgcounter v1.86, the PCL3/4/5 parser was rewritten from
169scratch, and is now much more readable, maintainable, and of course accurate.
170
171The old parser was still available until pkpgcounter v2.18 was published, but
172was definitely removed after that, just before pkpgcounter v3.00 was published.
173
174pkpgcounter's PCLXL (aka PCL6) parser doesn't originate from PCLCount, but
175was written from scratch, just like all the other parsers included in
176pkpgcounter.
177
178=============================================================================
179
180pkpgcounter's ink coverage algorithm for the CMYK colorspace is a
181direct Python port from the PrintBill project by Daniel Franklin.
182PrintBill is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
183License of the Free Software Foundation, version 2 or higher. The
184algorithms used for the other colorspaces are a complete rewrite of
185PrintBill's algorithms using both Python and the Python Imaging
186Library's facilities.
187
188=============================================================================
189
190Please report any problem to the bug tracker at http://trac.pykota.com
Note: See TracBrowser for help on using the browser.