[net.text] Doing equations w/nroff on Okidata printers??

nancy@biomed.UUCP (Nancy J. Herrig) (05/20/85)

    We have discovered that our Okidata printers will not automatically
roll the paper backwards.  This makes doing doing superscripting and 
subscripting from nroff somewhat awkward.  However, printing equations
from nroff on the printer is hopeless without the ability to roll the 
paper backwards.  Is this problem unique to the Okidata family of
printers??   We've got a Pacemark 2410 that we've be able to do some
nice plotting on and are willing to do what it will take to make nroff
print the equations.  Has anyone done this already??  It doesn't seem
like an easy task.  Thanks in advance.


                          --Nancy Herrig

                            Biomed. Engineering
                            Mass. General Hospital

                            !wjh12!biomed

wcs@ho95b.UUCP (Bill Stewart) (05/21/85)

> We have discovered that our Okidata printers will not automatically
> roll the paper backwards.  This makes doing doing superscripting and 
> subscripting from nroff somewhat awkward.  However, printing equations
> from nroff on the printer is hopeless without the ability to roll the 
> paper backwards.  
Depending on how you use the oki (nroff table? postprocessor for tty37
escape sequences?) you may be able to get around it.  If you use a
postprocessor, you can use "col" to eliminate the need for reverse linefeeds.  
With no options it produces output for a "dumb" terminal; with -f it
will use the ESC-9 forward-half-linefeed as well.
-- 
			Bill Stewart	1-201-949-0705
			AT&T Bell Labs, Room 4K-435, Holmdel NJ
			{ihnp4,allegra,cbosgd,vax135}!ho95c!wcs