print.txt For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2010 Jul 20LINK

VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar

Printing printingLINK

1. Introduction print-intro

2. Print options print-options

3. PostScript Printing postscript-printing

4. PostScript Printing Encoding postscript-print-encoding

5. PostScript CJK Printing postscript-cjk-printing

6. PostScript Printing Troubleshooting postscript-print-trouble

7. PostScript Utilities postscript-print-util

8. Formfeed Characters printing-formfeed

{Vi has None of this}

{only available when compiled with the +printer feature}

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

1. Introduction print-introLINK

On MS-Windows Vim can print your text on any installed printer. On other

systems a PostScript file is produced. This can be directly sent to a

PostScript printer. For other printers a program like ghostscript needs to be

used.

Note: If you have problems printing with :hardcopy, an alternative is to use

:TOhtml and print the resulting html file from a browser.

:ha :hardcopy E237 E238 E324LINK

:[range]ha[rdcopy][!] [arguments]

Send [range] lines (default whole file) to the

printer.

On MS-Windows a dialog is displayed to allow selection

of printer, paper size etc. To skip the dialog, use

the [!]. In this case the printer defined by

'printdevice' is used, or, if 'printdevice' is empty,

the system default printer.

For systems other than MS-Windows, PostScript is

written in a temp file and 'printexpr' is used to

actually print it. Then [arguments] can be used by

'printexpr' through v:cmdarg. Otherwise [arguments]

is ignored. 'printoptions' can be used to specify

paper size, duplex, etc.

:[range]ha[rdcopy][!] >{filename}

As above, but write the resulting PostScript in file

{filename}.

Things like "%" are expanded cmdline-special

Careful: An existing file is silently overwritten.

{only available when compiled with the +postscript

feature}

On MS-Windows use the "print to file" feature of the

printer driver.

Progress is displayed during printing as a page number and a percentage. To

abort printing use the interrupt key (CTRL-C or, on MS-systems, CTRL-Break).

Printer output is controlled by the 'printfont' and 'printoptions' options.

'printheader' specifies the format of a page header.

The printed file is always limited to the selected margins, irrespective of

the current window's 'wrap' or 'linebreak' settings. The "wrap" item in

'printoptions' can be used to switch wrapping off.

The current highlighting colors are used in the printout, with the following

considerations:

1) The normal background is always rendered as white (i.e. blank paper).

2) White text or the default foreground is rendered as black, so that it shows

up!

3) If 'background' is "dark", then the colours are darkened to compensate for

the fact that otherwise they would be too bright to show up clearly on

white paper.

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

2. Print options print-optionsLINK

Here are the details for the options that change the way printing is done.

For generic info about setting options see options.txt.

pdev-optionLINK

'printdevice' 'pdev' string (default empty)

global

This defines the name of the printer to be used when the :hardcopy command

is issued with a bang (!) to skip the printer selection dialog. On Win32, it

should be the printer name exactly as it appears in the standard printer

dialog.

If the option is empty, then vim will use the system default printer for

":hardcopy!"

penc-option E620LINK

'printencoding' 'penc' String (default empty, except for:

Windows, OS/2: cp1252,

Macintosh: mac-roman,

VMS: dec-mcs,

HPUX: hp-roman8,

EBCDIC: ebcdic-uk)

global

Sets the character encoding used when printing. This option tells VIM which

print character encoding file from the "print" directory in 'runtimepath' to

use.

This option will accept any value from encoding-names. Any recognized names

are converted to VIM standard names - see 'encoding' for more details. Names

not recognized by VIM will just be converted to lower case and underscores

replaced with '-' signs.

If 'printencoding' is empty or VIM cannot find the file then it will use

'encoding' (if VIM is compiled with +multi_byte and it is set an 8-bit

encoding) to find the print character encoding file. If VIM is unable to find

a character encoding file then it will use the "latin1" print character

encoding file.

When 'encoding' is set to a multi-byte encoding, VIM will try to convert

characters to the printing encoding for printing (if 'printencoding' is empty

then the conversion will be to latin1). Conversion to a printing encoding

other than latin1 will require VIM to be compiled with the +iconv feature.

If no conversion is possible then printing will fail. Any characters that

cannot be converted will be replaced with upside down question marks.

Four print character encoding files are provided to support default Mac, VMS,

HPUX, and EBCDIC character encodings and are used by default on these

platforms. Code page 1252 print character encoding is used by default on

Windows and OS/2 platforms.

pexpr-optionLINK

'printexpr' 'pexpr' String (default: see below)

global

Expression that is evaluated to print the PostScript produced with

:hardcopy.

The file name to be printed is in v:fname_in.

The arguments to the ":hardcopy" command are in v:cmdarg.

The expression must take care of deleting the file after printing it.

When there is an error, the expression must return a non-zero number.

If there is no error, return zero or an empty string.

The default for non MS-Windows or VMS systems is to simply use "lpr" to print

the file:

system('lpr' . (&printdevice == '' ? '' : ' -P' . &printdevice)

. ' ' . v:fname_in) . delete(v:fname_in) + v:shell_error

On MS-Dos, MS-Windows and OS/2 machines the default is to copy the file to the

currently specified printdevice:

system('copy' . ' ' . v:fname_in . (&printdevice == ''

? ' LPT1:' : (' \"' . &printdevice . '\"')))

. delete(v:fname_in)

On VMS machines the default is to send the file to either the default or

currently specified printdevice:

system('print' . (&printdevice == '' ? '' : ' /queue=' .

&printdevice) . ' ' . v:fname_in) . delete(v:fname_in)

If you change this option, using a function is an easy way to avoid having to

escape all the spaces. Example:

:set printexpr=PrintFile(v:fname_in)

:function PrintFile(fname)

: call system("ghostview " . a:fname)

: call delete(a:fname)

: return v:shell_error

:endfunc

Be aware that some print programs return control before they have read the

file. If you delete the file too soon it will not be printed. These programs

usually offer an option to have them remove the file when printing is done.

E365LINK

If evaluating the expression fails or it results in a non-zero number, you get

an error message. In that case Vim will delete the file. In the default

value for non-MS-Windows a trick is used: Adding "v:shell_error" will result

in a non-zero number when the system() call fails.

This option cannot be set from a modeline or in the sandbox, for security

reasons.

pfn-option E613LINK

'printfont' 'pfn' string (default "courier")

global

This is the name of the font that will be used for the :hardcopy command's

output. It has the same format as the 'guifont' option, except that only one

font may be named, and the special "guifont=*" syntax is not available.

In the Win32 GUI version this specifies a font name with its extra attributes,

as with the 'guifont' option.

For other systems, only ":h11" is recognized, where "11" is the point size of

the font. When omitted, the point size is 10.

pheader-optionLINK

'printheader' 'pheader' string (default "%<%f%h%m%=Page %N")

global

This defines the format of the header produced in :hardcopy output. The

option is defined in the same way as the 'statusline' option. If Vim has not

been compiled with the +statusline feature, this option has no effect and a

simple default header is used, which shows the page number. The same simple

header is used when this option is empty.

pmbcs-optionLINK

'printmbcharset' 'pmbcs' string (default "")

global

Sets the CJK character set to be used when generating CJK output from

:hardcopy. The following predefined values are currently recognised by VIM:

Value Description

Chinese GB_2312-80

(Simplified) GBT_12345-90

MAC Apple Mac Simplified Chinese

GBT-90_MAC GB/T 12345-90 Apple Mac Simplified

Chinese

GBK GBK (GB 13000.1-93)

ISO10646 ISO 10646-1:1993

Chinese CNS_1993 CNS 11643-1993, Planes 1 & 2

(Traditional) BIG5

ETEN Big5 with ETen extensions

ISO10646 ISO 10646-1:1993

Japanese JIS_C_1978

JIS_X_1983

JIS_X_1990

MSWINDOWS Win3.1/95J (JIS X 1997 + NEC +

IBM extensions)

KANJITALK6 Apple Mac KanjiTalk V6.x

KANJITALK7 Apple Mac KanjiTalk V7.x

Korean KS_X_1992

MAC Apple Macintosh Korean

MSWINDOWS KS X 1992 with MS extensions

ISO10646 ISO 10646-1:1993

Only certain combinations of the above values and 'printencoding' are

possible. The following tables show the valid combinations:

euc-cn gbk ucs-2 utf-8

Chinese GB_2312-80 x

(Simplified) GBT_12345-90 x

MAC x

GBT-90_MAC x

GBK x

ISO10646 x x

euc-tw big5 ucs-2 utf-8

Chinese CNS_1993 x

(Traditional) BIG5 x

ETEN x

ISO10646 x x

euc-jp sjis ucs-2 utf-8

Japanese JIS_C_1978 x x

JIS_X_1983 x x

JIS_X_1990 x x x

MSWINDOWS x

KANJITALK6 x

KANJITALK7 x

euc-kr cp949 ucs-2 utf-8

Korean KS_X_1992 x

MAC x

MSWINDOWS x

ISO10646 x x

To set up the correct encoding and character set for printing some

Japanese text you would do the following;

:set printencoding=euc-jp

:set printmbcharset=JIS_X_1983

If 'printmbcharset' is not one of the above values then it is assumed to

specify a custom multi-byte character set and no check will be made that it is

compatible with the value for 'printencoding'. VIM will look for a file

defining the character set in the "print" directory in 'runtimepath'.

pmbfn-optionLINK

'printmbfont' 'pmbfn' string (default "")

global

This is a comma-separated list of fields for font names to be used when

generating CJK output from :hardcopy. Each font name has to be preceded

with a letter indicating the style the font is to be used for as follows:

r:{font-name} font to use for normal characters

b:{font-name} font to use for bold characters

i:{font-name} font to use for italic characters

o:{font-name} font to use for bold-italic characters

A field with the r: prefix must be specified when doing CJK printing. The

other fontname specifiers are optional. If a specifier is missing then

another font will be used as follows:

if b: is missing, then use r:

if i: is missing, then use r:

if o: is missing, then use b:

Some CJK fonts do not contain characters for codes in the ASCII code range.

Also, some characters in the CJK ASCII code ranges differ in a few code points

from traditional ASCII characters. There are two additional fields to control

printing of characters in the ASCII code range.

c:yes Use Courier font for characters in the ASCII

c:no (default) code range.

a:yes Use ASCII character set for codes in the ASCII

a:no (default) code range.

The following is an example of specifying two multi-byte fonts, one for normal

and italic printing and one for bold and bold-italic printing, and using

Courier to print codes in the ASCII code range but using the national

character set:

:set printmbfont=r:WadaMin-Regular,b:WadaMin-Bold,c:yes

popt-optionLINK

'printoptions' 'popt' string (default "")

global

This is a comma-separated list of items that control the format of the output

of :hardcopy:

left:{spec} left margin (default: 10pc)

right:{spec} right margin (default: 5pc)

top:{spec} top margin (default: 5pc)

bottom:{spec} bottom margin (default: 5pc)

{spec} is a number followed by "in" for inches, "pt"

for points (1 point is 1/72 of an inch), "mm" for

millimeters or "pc" for a percentage of the media

size.

Weird example:

left:2in,top:30pt,right:16mm,bottom:3pc

If the unit is not recognized there is no error and

the default value is used.

header:{nr} Number of lines to reserve for the header.

Only the first line is actually filled, thus when {nr}

is 2 there is one empty line. The header is formatted

according to 'printheader'.

header:0 Do not print a header.

header:2 (default) Use two lines for the header

syntax:n Do not use syntax highlighting. This is faster and

thus useful when printing large files.

syntax:y Do syntax highlighting.

syntax:a (default) Use syntax highlighting if the printer appears to be

able to print color or grey.

number:y Include line numbers in the printed output.

number:n (default) No line numbers.

wrap:y (default) Wrap long lines.

wrap:n Truncate long lines.

duplex:off Print on one side.

duplex:long (default) Print on both sides (when possible), bind on long

side.

duplex:short Print on both sides (when possible), bind on short

side.

collate:y (default) Collating: 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3

collate:n No collating: 1 1 1, 2 2 2, 3 3 3

jobsplit:n (default) Do all copies in one print job

jobsplit:y Do each copy as a separate print job. Useful when

doing N-up postprocessing.

portrait:y (default) Orientation is portrait.

portrait:n Orientation is landscape.

a4 letterLINK

paper:A4 (default) Paper size: A4

paper:{name} Paper size from this table:

{name} size in cm size in inch

10x14 25.4 x 35.57 10 x 14

A3 29.7 x 42 11.69 x 16.54

A4 21 x 29.7 8.27 x 11.69

A5 14.8 x 21 5.83 x 8.27

B4 25 x 35.3 10.12 x 14.33

B5 17.6 x 25 7.17 x 10.12

executive 18.42 x 26.67 7.25 x 10.5

folio 21 x 33 8.27 x 13

ledger 43.13 x 27.96 17 x 11

legal 21.59 x 35.57 8.5 x 14

letter 21.59 x 27.96 8.5 x 11

quarto 21.59 x 27.5 8.5 x 10.83

statement 13.97 x 21.59 5.5 x 8.5

tabloid 27.96 x 43.13 11 x 17

formfeed:n (default) Treat form feed characters (0x0c) as a normal print

character.

formfeed:y When a form feed character is encountered, continue

printing of the current line at the beginning of the

first line on a new page.

The item indicated with (default) is used when the item is not present. The

values are not always used, especially when using a dialog to select the

printer and options.

Example:

:set printoptions=paper:letter,duplex:off

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

3. PostScript Printing postscript-printingLINK

E455 E456 E457 E624LINK

Provided you have enough disk space there should be no problems generating a

PostScript file. You need to have the runtime files correctly installed (if

you can find the help files, they probably are).

There are currently a number of limitations with PostScript printing:

- 'printfont' - The font name is ignored (the Courier family is always used -

it should be available on all PostScript printers) but the font size is

used.

- 'printoptions' - The duplex setting is used when generating PostScript

output, but it is up to the printer to take notice of the setting. If the

printer does not support duplex printing then it should be silently ignored.

Some printers, however, don't print at all.

- 8-bit support - While a number of 8-bit print character encodings are

supported it is possible that some characters will not print. Whether a

character will print depends on the font in the printer knowing the

character. Missing characters will be replaced with an upside down question

mark, or a space if that character is also not known by the font. It may be

possible to get all the characters in an encoding to print by installing a

new version of the Courier font family.

- Multi-byte support - Currently VIM will try to convert multi-byte characters

to the 8-bit encoding specified by 'printencoding' (or latin1 if it is

empty). Any characters that are not successfully converted are shown as

unknown characters. Printing will fail if VIM cannot convert the multi-byte

to the 8-bit encoding.

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

4. Custom 8-bit Print Character Encodings postscript-print-encodingLINK

E618 E619LINK

To use your own print character encoding when printing 8-bit character data

you need to define your own PostScript font encoding vector. Details on how

to define a font encoding vector is beyond the scope of this help file, but

you can find details in the PostScript Language Reference Manual, 3rd Edition,

published by Addison-Wesley and available in PDF form at

http://www.adobe.com/. The following describes what you need to do for VIM to

locate and use your print character encoding.

i. Decide on a unique name for your encoding vector, one that does not clash

with any of the recognized or standard encoding names that VIM uses (see

encoding-names for a list), and that no one else is likely to use.

ii. Copy $VIMRUNTIME/print/latin1.ps to the print subdirectory in your

'runtimepath' and rename it with your unique name.

iii. Edit your renamed copy of latin1.ps, replacing all occurrences of latin1

with your unique name (don't forget the line starting %%Title:), and

modify the array of glyph names to define your new encoding vector. The

array must have exactly 256 entries or you will not be able to print!

iv. Within VIM, set 'printencoding' to your unique encoding name and then

print your file. VIM will now use your custom print character encoding.

VIM will report an error with the resource file if you change the order or

content of the first 3 lines, other than the name of the encoding on the line

starting %%Title: or the version number on the line starting %%Version:.

[Technical explanation for those that know PostScript - VIM looks for a file

with the same name as the encoding it will use when printing. The file

defines a new PostScript Encoding resource called /VIM-name, where name is the

print character encoding VIM will use.]

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

5. PostScript CJK Printing postscript-cjk-printingLINK

E673 E674 E675LINK

VIM supports printing of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean files. Setting up VIM

to correctly print CJK files requires setting up a few more options.

Each of these countries has many standard character sets and encodings which

require that both be specified when printing. In addition, CJK fonts normally

do not have the concept of italic glyphs and use different weight or stroke

style to achieve emphasis when printing. This in turn requires a different

approach to specifying fonts to use when printing.

The encoding and character set are specified with the 'printencoding' and

'printmbcharset' options. If 'printencoding' is not specified then 'encoding'

is used as normal. If 'printencoding' is specified then characters will be

translated to this encoding for printing. You should ensure that the encoding

is compatible with the character set needed for the file contents or some

characters may not appear when printed.

The fonts to use for CJK printing are specified with 'printmbfont'. This

option allows you to specify different fonts to use when printing characters

which are syntax highlighted with the font styles normal, italic, bold and

bold-italic.

No CJK fonts are supplied with VIM. There are some free Korean, Japanese, and

Traditional Chinese fonts available at:

http://examples.oreilly.com/cjkvinfo/adobe/samples/

You can find descriptions of the various fonts in the read me file at

http://examples.oreilly.de/english_examples/cjkvinfo/adobe/00README

Please read your printer documentation on how to install new fonts.

CJK fonts can be large containing several thousand glyphs, and it is not

uncommon to find that they only contain a subset of a national standard. It

is not unusual to find the fonts to not include characters for codes in the

ASCII code range. If you find half-width Roman characters are not appearing

in your printout then you should configure VIM to use the Courier font the

half-width ASCII characters with 'printmbfont'. If your font does not include

other characters then you will need to find another font that does.

Another issue with ASCII characters, is that the various national character

sets specify a couple of different glyphs in the ASCII code range. If you

print ASCII text using the national character set you may see some unexpected

characters. If you want true ASCII code printing then you need to configure

VIM to output ASCII characters for the ASCII code range with 'printmbfont'.

It is possible to define your own multi-byte character set although this

should not be attempted lightly. A discussion on the process if beyond the

scope of these help files. You can find details on CMap (character map) files

in the document 'Adobe CMap and CIDFont Files Specification, Version 1.0',

available from http://www.adobe.com as a PDF file.

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

6. PostScript Printing Troubleshooting postscript-print-troubleLINK

E621LINK

Usually the only sign of a problem when printing with PostScript is that your

printout does not appear. If you are lucky you may get a printed page that

tells you the PostScript operator that generated the error that prevented the

print job completing.

There are a number of possible causes as to why the printing may have failed:

- Wrong version of the prolog resource file. The prolog resource file

contains some PostScript that VIM needs to be able to print. Each version

of VIM needs one particular version. Make sure you have correctly installed

the runtime files, and don't have any old versions of a file called prolog

in the print directory in your 'runtimepath' directory.

- Paper size. Some PostScript printers will abort printing a file if they do

not support the requested paper size. By default VIM uses A4 paper. Find

out what size paper your printer normally uses and set the appropriate paper

size with 'printoptions'. If you cannot find the name of the paper used,

measure a sheet and compare it with the table of supported paper sizes listed

for 'printoptions', using the paper that is closest in both width AND height.

Note: The dimensions of actual paper may vary slightly from the ones listed.

If there is no paper listed close enough, then you may want to try psresize

from PSUtils, discussed below.

- Two-sided printing (duplex). Normally a PostScript printer that does not

support two-sided printing will ignore any request to do it. However, some

printers may abort the job altogether. Try printing with duplex turned off.

Note: Duplex prints can be achieved manually using PS utils - see below.

- Collated printing. As with Duplex printing, most PostScript printers that

do not support collating printouts will ignore a request to do so. Some may

not. Try printing with collation turned off.

- Syntax highlighting. Some print management code may prevent the generated

PostScript file from being printed on a black and white printer when syntax

highlighting is turned on, even if solid black is the only color used. Try

printing with syntax highlighting turned off.

A safe printoptions setting to try is:

:set printoptions=paper:A4,duplex:off,collate:n,syntax:n

Replace "A4" with the paper size that best matches your printer paper.

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

7. PostScript Utilities postscript-print-utilLINK

7.1 Ghostscript

Ghostscript is a PostScript and PDF interpreter that can be used to display

and print on non-PostScript printers PostScript and PDF files. It can also

generate PDF files from PostScript.

Ghostscript will run on a wide variety of platforms.

There are three available versions:

- AFPL Ghostscript (formerly Aladdin Ghostscript) which is free for

non-commercial use. It can be obtained from:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

- GNU Ghostscript which is available under the GNU General Public License. It

can be obtained from:

ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/gnu/

- A commercial version for inclusion in commercial products.

Additional information on Ghostscript can also be found at:

http://www.ghostscript.com/

Support for a number of non PostScript printers is provided in the

distribution as standard, but if you cannot find support for your printer

check the Ghostscript site for other printers not included by default.

7.2 Ghostscript Previewers.

The interface to Ghostscript is very primitive so a number of graphical front

ends have been created. These allow easier PostScript file selection,

previewing at different zoom levels, and printing. Check supplied

documentation for full details.

X11

- Ghostview. Obtainable from:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gv/

- gv. Derived from Ghostview. Obtainable from:

http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~plass/gv/

Copies (possibly not the most recent) can be found at:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gv/

OpenVMS

- Is apparently supported in the main code now (untested). See:

http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~plass/gv/

Windows and OS/2

- GSview. Obtainable from:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

DOS

- ps_view. Obtainable from:

ftp://ftp.pg.gda.pl/pub/TeX/support/ps_view/

ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/support/ps_view/

Linux

- GSview. Linux version of the popular Windows and OS/2 previewer.

Obtainable from:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

- BMV. Different from Ghostview and gv in that it doesn't use X but svgalib.

Obtainable from:

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/viewers/svga/bmv-1.2.tgz

7.3 PSUtils

PSUtils is a collection of utility programs for manipulating PostScript

documents. Binary distributions are available for many platforms, as well as

the full source. PSUtils can be found at:

http://knackered.org/angus/psutils

The utilities of interest include:

- psnup. Convert PS files for N-up printing.

- psselect. Select page range and order of printing.

- psresize. Change the page size.

- psbook. Reorder and lay out pages ready for making a book.

The output of one program can be used as the input to the next, allowing for

complex print document creation.

N-UP PRINTING

The psnup utility takes an existing PostScript file generated from VIM and

convert it to an n-up version. The simplest way to create a 2-up printout is

to first create a PostScript file with:

:hardcopy > test.ps

Then on your command line execute:

psnup -n 2 test.ps final.ps

Note: You may get warnings from some Ghostscript previewers for files produced

by psnup - these may safely be ignored.

Finally print the file final.ps to your PostScript printer with your

platform's print command. (You will need to delete the two PostScript files

afterwards yourself.) 'printexpr' could be modified to perform this extra

step before printing.

ALTERNATE DUPLEX PRINTING

It is possible to achieve a poor man's version of duplex printing using the PS

utility psselect. This utility has options -e and -o for printing just the

even or odd pages of a PS file respectively.

First generate a PS file with the 'hardcopy' command, then generate a new

files with all the odd and even numbered pages with:

psselect -o test.ps odd.ps

psselect -e test.ps even.ps

Next print odd.ps with your platform's normal print command. Then take the

print output, turn it over and place it back in the paper feeder. Now print

even.ps with your platform's print command. All the even pages should now

appear on the back of the odd pages.

There are a couple of points to bear in mind:

1. Position of the first page. If the first page is on top of the printout

when printing the odd pages then you need to reverse the order that the odd

pages are printed. This can be done with the -r option to psselect. This

will ensure page 2 is printed on the back of page 1.

Note: it is better to reverse the odd numbered pages rather than the even

numbered in case there are an odd number of pages in the original PS file.

2. Paper flipping. When turning over the paper with the odd pages printed on

them you may have to either flip them horizontally (along the long edge) or

vertically (along the short edge), as well as possibly rotating them 180

degrees. All this depends on the printer - it will be more obvious for

desktop ink jets than for small office laser printers where the paper path

is hidden from view.

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

8. Formfeed Characters printing-formfeedLINK

By default VIM does not do any special processing of formfeed control

characters. Setting the 'printoptions' formfeed item will make VIM recognize

formfeed characters and continue printing the current line at the beginning

of the first line on a new page. The use of formfeed characters provides

rudimentary print control but there are certain things to be aware of.

VIM will always start printing a line (including a line number if enabled)

containing a formfeed character, even if it is the first character on the

line. This means if a line starting with a formfeed character is the first

line of a page then VIM will print a blank page.

Since the line number is printed at the start of printing the line containing

the formfeed character, the remainder of the line printed on the new page

will not have a line number printed for it (in the same way as the wrapped

lines of a long line when wrap in 'printoptions' is enabled).

If the formfeed character is the last character on a line, then printing will

continue on the second line of the new page, not the first. This is due to

VIM processing the end of the line after the formfeed character and moving

down a line to continue printing.

Due to the points made above it is recommended that when formfeed character

processing is enabled, printing of line numbers is disabled, and that form

feed characters are not the last character on a line. Even then you may need

to adjust the number of lines before a formfeed character to prevent

accidental blank pages.

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vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: