pagesizes (5)

The pagesizes database defines the page dimensions and guaranteed reproducible areas (\s-1GRA\s+1) for well-known page sizes. The GRA is the portion of the page that is guaranteed to be imaged during facsimile transmission. This region is typically less than the full page dimensions because of paper roller contacts and other mechanical aspects of the printing process in a facsimile machine.

All \*(Fx programs that require page size information read the information from this database using a page size name. Documents should be prepared such that the full page dimensions are employed with the imaged area contained within the GRA.

The system-wide default page size to use in preparing documents for transmission is given by the ``default'' entry in the database. (NB: the default entry should be placed last so that inverse matches find the real page size name and not the default entry.)

The page size database is an ASCII file with the following format. Each entry consists of whitespace-separated fields:

name  abbrev  width  height  gra-width  gra-height  top-margin  left-margin

Fields have the following interpretation:

name

the full name for the page size; e.g. \s-1ISO A4\s+1;

abbrev

an abbreviated version of the full name for use in compact listings such as the receive queue listing printed by faxstat(1);

width

the full width of the page;

height

the full height of the page;

gra-width

the width of the GRA;

gra-height

the height of the GRA;

top-margin

the margin between the top of the full page and the top of the GRA;

left-margin

the margin between the left side of the full page the left side of the GRA.

The first two fields must be separated from the subsequent fields by a tab character (possibly followed by more whitespace); this is done to easily permit blank characters to be included in names. Otherwise fields can be separated by any amount of any kind of whitespace. Numbers are all base 10 and in basic measurement units (\s-1BMU\s+1); defined as 1/1200 x 25.4 millimeters for paper output with a scale factor of one. All fields must be present on a single line; otherwise the entry is ignored. Comments are introduced by the ``#'' character and continue to the end the line.

Page size database lookups are either by name or by page dimensions. Lookups by name are done by sequentially scanning the entries in the database for the first entry that has a matching abbreviation or substring of the page size name field. The string comparisons ignore case so, for example, ``a4'' would match a full name of ``\s-1ISO A4\s+1''. Lookups by dimension scan the entire database and return the page with the closest dimensions using a straightforward distance metric. If the difference in dimensions of the closest match is greater than 1/2 inch on each side, then no page entry is returned for a lookup by dimension.

hylafax-client(1), faxmail(1), faxstat(1), sendfax(1), sgi2fax(1), textfmt(1).