root / pkpgcounter / trunk / README @ 550

# $Id$

pkpgcounter : a generic Page Description Language parser

(c) 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Jerome Alet <alet@librelogiciel.com>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

=============================================================================

pkpgcounter is a generic Page Description Language parser which can either
compute the number of pages in a document, or compute the percent of
ink coverage needed to print each page, in different colorspaces.

pkpgcounter currently recognizes the following document formats :

        - PostScript (both DSC compliant and binary)
        
        - PDF
        
        - PCL3/4/5
        
        - PCLXL (aka PCL6)
        
        - DVI
        
        - OpenDocument (ISO/IEC DIS 26300)
        
        - Microsoft Word (c) (tm) (r) (etc...)
        
        - Plain text
        
        - TIFF
        
        - Several other image formats
        
        - ESC/P2
        
        - Zenographics ZjStream
        
        - Samsung QPDL (aka SPL2)
        
        - Samsung SPL1
        
        - ESC/PageS03
        
        - Brother HBP
        
        - Hewlett-Packard Lightweight Imaging Device Interface Language
        
        - Structured Fax
        
The eight latter ones, as well as some TIFF documents, are currently 
only supported in page counting mode. 

By default, when launched pkpgcounter prints on its standard output 
a single integer representing the total number of pages in all the 
files which filenames you've passed on the command line. 

With no argument, or with a single dash in non-option arguments,
pkpgcounter reads datas to parse from its standard input in addition
to other non-options arguments which are treated as filenames
representing the files to parse.

See pkpgcounter --help for details and examples.

=============================================================================

Installation :
--------------

  0 - Download pkpgcounter from :
  
        http://www.pykota.com/software/pkpgcounter/download
        
      and extract it :  
      
        $ tar -zxf pkpgcounter-x.yy.tar.gz
        
        where x.yy is pkpgcounter' version number.
        
  1 - Run the installation script :
      
        $ python setup.py install
        
      This will usually install the pkpgcounter into /usr/bin and  
      the library into /usr/lib/python2.?/site-packages/pkpgpdls/
        
  2 - Use pkpgcounter :
  
      $ pkpgcounter file1.ps file2.pclxl ... <fileN.escp2
      
      pkpgcounter will display the total size in pages of all the files
      passed on the command line.
      
      $ pkpgcounter --colorspace bw --resolution 150 file1.ps
  
      Will output the percent of black ink needed on each page of
      the file1.ps file rendered at 150 dpi.
      
  3 - That's all !    
  
DEPENDENCIES :

  Most of the time, pkpgcounter only depends on the presence of :
  
  - The Python Imaging Library (python-imaging)
  
  But, depending on the file formats you plan to work with, and on the
  accounting mode you want to use (pages vs ink), you may need to install
  some or all of the additional software listed below. Usually, if one is
  needed then pkpgcounter will complain. So your best bet is probably 
  to NOT INSTALL anything until pkpgcounter asks you to do so on its
  standard error stream. Here's the list of software which may be needed
  for some operations with pkpgcounter :

  - GhostScript (gs)
  
  - The X Virtual Frame Buffer (xvfb)
  
  - The X authority file utility xauth (xbase-clients)
  
  - The dvips converter from TeX DVI to PostScript (tetex-bin)
  
  - The ImageMagick image manipulation toolkit (imagemagick)
  
  - The AbiWord word processor (abiword)

  - The GhostPCL/GhostPDL's pcl6 converter from PCL to PostScript
        
=============================================================================

Troubleshooting : 
-----------------

  If pkpgcounter gives incorrect results to you, please make an incorrectly
  parsed data file available to us on some website, and tell us which 
  driver was used, how many pages are in the file, and any additional 
  information you think is relevant.
  
  If pkpgcounter complain about your system lacking the Python Psyco module,
  please consider installing it to speedup file parsing. However, don't forget
  that Psyco currently only runs on the 32 bits x86 platform, so no need to 
  install it if you've got another system type.
  
=============================================================================

Before pkpgcounter v1.86, the PCL3/4/5 parser was a Python backport of an early
release of the PCLCount software by Eduardo Gielamo Oliveira and Rodolfo Broco
Manin, available from :

    http://www.fea.unicamp.br/pclcount/
    
Their software is distributed under either the terms of a BSD-like license,    
or the terms of the GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation.

Beginning with pkpgcounter v1.86, the PCL3/4/5 parser was rewritten from
scratch, and is now much more readable, maintainable, and of course accurate.

The old parser was still available until pkpgcounter v2.18 was published, but
was definitely removed after that, just before pkpgcounter v3.00 was published.
    
pkpgcounter's PCLXL (aka PCL6) parser doesn't originate from PCLCount, but 
was written from scratch, just like all the other parsers included in
pkpgcounter.

=============================================================================

pkpgcounter's ink coverage algorithm for the CMYK colorspace is a 
direct Python port from the PrintBill project by Daniel Franklin. 
PrintBill is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public 
License of the Free Software Foundation, version 2 or higher. The 
algorithms used for the other colorspaces are a complete rewrite of 
PrintBill's algorithms using both Python and the Python Imaging 
Library's facilities. 

=============================================================================

Please e-mail bugs to : alet@librelogiciel.com (Jerome Alet)