Finding manuals for lpr

Solution 1:

Your /usr/bin/lpr is either installed with the cups-bsd package or with the lprng package. You can check which package you're using with dpkg -S $(which lpr).

If you are using the CUPS package, some of the available options are listed in man lp on your system. You should also check http://localhost:631/help (yes, on your system) for CUPS built-in help. The page-ranges option specifically is mentioned by CUPS documentation (see Document Options, and Command-Line Options; these are also available in the online help page "Command-Line Printing and Options"):

The -o page-ranges=pages option selects a range of pages for printing:

lp -o page-ranges=1 filename
lp -o page-ranges=1-4 filename
lp -o page-ranges=1-4,7,9-12 filename
lpr -o page-ranges=1-4,7,9-12 filename

If you're using LPRng, see the LPRng project documentation page. The LPRng Reference Manual is still online, although the Printing Cookbook appears offline currently. I don't see any specific references to a page-ranges option, but it's very possible the option was introduced in a very old LP or LPR implementation.

Solution 2:

Uh...is

man lpr

not working for you? Are the man pages on your machine stored by a seperate package that you haven't installed yet?

I should clarify that there isn't a lpr. Rather there are many versions provided by many vendors (and notably by GNU), and not all versions support the same set of options. Have you tried the offending command and gotten it to work?

The Apple version is doubtless derived from one of the BSD versions, and probably supports a smaller set of options that the GNU version.