Printing

## 1a. Printing on Windows

On Windows, the best results will be obtained on PostScript printers, since these have built-in facilities for images (e.g. spectrograms) and rotated text. If a PostScript printer is available, Praat will usually write direct PostScript commands to that printer (see PostScript settings... if you want to switch this off). Praat also supports non-PostScript printers, such as most colour inkjet printers.

If you don't have a PostScript printer, and you still want PostScript quality, you can save the picture to an EPS file (Save as EPS file...). You can then view this file with the freely available GhostView™ program, which you can download from `http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/`, or convert it to PDF with either GhostView or Adobe® Acrobat™ Distiller™, which is more reliable than GhostView but is also expensive.

## 1b. Printing on Macintosh

On the Mac, Praat will print in PDF, both to PostScript and non-PostScript printers.

## 1c. Printing on Linux

On Linux, when you tell Praat to print a picture or manual page, Praat will write the picture to a temporary PostScript file and send this file to a printer with the print command, which you can change with PostScript settings.... You do not need a PostScript printer to print PostScript directly, because the lpr program sends PostScript files through the GhostScript program, which is a part of all modern Linux distributions. The print command is typically `lpr %s`. By changing the print command (with PostScript settings...), you can change it to something fancier. For instance, if you want to save the woods and print two pages on one sheet of paper, you change it to `cat %s | mpage -2 -o -f -m0 | lpr`.

## 2. Indirect printing with your word processor

If you save your picture to an EPS file, you will be able to include it as a picture in your favourite word processor (Microsoft® Word™, LaTeX...). See Save as EPS file....

On the Mac it is better to save your picture to a PDF file, which both Microsoft® Word™ (when using the `.docx` format) and LaTeX can process. See Save as PDF file....

## 3. Indirect printing through the clipboard

On Windows, pictures included in your word processor via Copy to clipboard or Save as Windows metafile... will print fine, though not as nicely as EPS files.

On the Mac, pictures included in your word processor (post-2006 versions) via Copy to clipboard will print just as nicely as PDF files (use the `.docx` format in Microsoft Word).

### Links to this page

- Acknowledgments
- Intro
- Print...