         =================================================
         =    README for OS/2 version of A2PS 4.10.x     =
         =================================================

                       (19990108)


            CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT:

            1) What is A2PS ?
            2) What about the OS/2 version ?
            3) Contents of this archive:
            4) Installation
            5) Building a2ps for OS/2
            6) Additional information



1) What is A2PS ?
   ************

Check out the supplied documentation, especially README to learn
about A2PS.


2) What about the OS/2 version ?
   ***************************

To get this utility built under OS/2 I had to work around the 
configure stuff which didn't work even using the latest Autoconf
port.

The National Language Support (NLS) for the executable's language
dependent resources is not include here and I don't offer a
shared library (dll) since I can see no further use for this library yet.
NLS is nevertheless on my todo list!


3) Contents of the binary distribution archive:
   ********************************************

 - the binary for OS/2 (a2ps.exe)
 - the supplied shell scripts with a REXX wrapper. You need
   an installed un*x shell (named sh.exe) in your path to run them.
   NOTE: not all those utils may be included here actually!
 - all data files for encoding, pretty printing, font selection, ...
 - documentation in GNU info format and man pages as well as
   documents regarding general issues (copyright, license,
   changelog, ...)


4) Installation:
   ************

  - Put a2ps.exe in the path and the manpage in the manpath.
  - Place a2ps.cfg and the subdirectories anywhere on your disk.
  - Set the environment variable A2PS_CONFIG to point to the
    directory where the configuration files (a2ps.cfg and a2ps-printer.cfg)
    can be found.
  - Edit a2ps.cfg and a2ps-printer.cfg to fit your installation.
    The most critical items are 'LibraryPath' (which has to include all
    those directories mentioned above) and the command to print out.

    In the given example I use the lpr and lpd to access one of my
    Postscript printer queues from the commandline. "lp" is a kind of 
    an alias for "lpr.exe -b -p HP5MPPSQ -s localhost" where HP5MPPSQ
    is one my Postscript printer queues. Both tools are shipped with
    Warp 4.
    If can't work out something similar, try out starting ghostview
    (ghostscript) or print to a file first. You may want to use
    "lportd" or tools like printmon.zip (from LEO, http://www.leo.org).
    Also check whether the default encoding is set properly. German
    OS/2 users may need to switch to ibm-cp850.


5) Building ap2s for OS/2
   **********************

  If you want to compile it yourself you will likely run into trouble
  using configure as even the Autoconf port fails on this stuff.
  Either you manage to fix the configure script yourself or
  you have to create suitable versions of 
    config.h
  and 
    Makefile.
  Or you can just copy arch/os2/Makefile.os2 to the toplevel directory
  and type "make" :-)

  The latest port of the Auto* tools and libtool is almost
  able to get things running out of the box! I'll try to help
  it get the remaining few percent in future.


6) Additional information:
   **********************

  The latest compiled version can be found on my webpages listed below.
  (there you can also find the utility 'file' which a2ps likes to call
  to guess the the file type)

  Let me know if you experience any trouble using this tool under OS/2!


Alexander Mai
st002279@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de
http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/~st002279
