OPTical ARchiver (optar)

If you are building optar yourself, download from github (git clone https://github.com/colindean/optar)

Outdated Website

Dependencies

Compiling

make will compile everything

make install (sudo make install if necessary) will install optar, uoptar, and pgm2ps into bin. (/usr/local/bin) you can check that with which [command].

pgm2ps

pgm2ps is actually a shell script. You can open it in a plaintext editor and edit it.

Run which pgm2ps, and edit it using any editor. (eg. vi $(which pgm2ps))

  • solve outdated imagemagic warning (see below)
  • change from A4 to US Letter formats (see below)

Writing (Encoding)

optar <input file> [filename base] (filename base is basically output file name without an extension)

This will roduce a filename-base.pgm file. PGM is a "grayscale image format".

Converting pgm2ps Stage

pgm2ps <file.pgm> or pgm2ps *.pgm to convert ALL .pgm files in the directory into printable PostScript (.ps).

If there is a warning about magick and covert. Run which pgm2ps, (pgm2ps is just a shell script) and vi <path>. Then replace covert command with magick.

A4 and US Letter changes

If you want to change to A4 (default) or US Letter, you have to edit which pgm2ps file. Substitute the following equations as described in comments within pgm2ps:

  • US Letter: 573.84x755.28+19.08+18.36
  • A4: 556.56x807.12+19.22+17.44

PostScript (.ps) is the file format printers use for printing. Gimp can open .ps and .pgm file formats, for checking if they are ok.

Reading (Decoding)

Just check the docs

You will need an industrial grade scanner for this.

unoptar <format-specs> filename-base > outputfile