laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (10/04/84)
From: furuta@uw-june.arpa (Richard Furuta)
Recently, I've begun to see a certain amount of discussion of the HP LaserJet
printer on other lists. This one comes from Usenet's net.text
--Rick
From kentm@byucsa.UUCP (Montgomery Kent Melvin) Sat Feb 5 22:28:16 206
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From: kentm@byucsa.UUCP (Montgomery Kent Melvin)
Newsgroups: net.text,net.periphs,net.micro.hp
Subject: HP LaserJet Answers (& remailing request)
Message-ID: <221@byucsa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Sep-84 13:20:22 PDT
Article-I.D.: byucsa.221
Posted: Thu Sep 13 13:20:22 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Sep-84 00:02:05 PDT
Organization: BYU Compter Science -- Provo UT
Lines: 91
On Friday, Sept. 13 I posted an article titled "HP LaserJet Inquiries".
Thanks to those who responded. Unfortunately though, problems with
disk failures here erased two days worth of unread mail. The mail
replies I did receive were:
From beesvax!utah-cs!seismo!umcp-cs!mark
From beesvax!utah-cs!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!lwt1
From beesvax!allegra!harpo!hp-pcd!hpcvln!tw
From beesvax!utah-cs!seismo!mcvax!vu44!tjalk!keie
From utah-cs!harpo!whuxb!ihnp4!gargoyle!toby
If any others sent me mail, please remail to me. The systems
programmers here assure me that the disk problems are fixed.
The following are from the replies I have received to date:
------------------------------
>> ... We can thus print the unavailable math characters by sending
>> to the printer a raster pattern (such as those used by vtroff)
>> for each character... Has anyone out there attempted such a mixture
>> of text and rasters?
> I have mixed raster images and text on a single page. I have not done
> anything elaborate (such as a character set), but I can see no real
> problems.
> Software-wise, you've already caught the only major problem, which is the
> memory limit on rasters. There shouldn't be any problem with lots of small
> rasters, though.
-------------------------------
>> Also, has anyone had success or failure at connecting the LaserJet
>> printer to a DEC Micro-VAX or similar computer.
> Any RS-232 driver (such as a terminal driver) should
> work fine. You will, of course, have to write a filter to translate
> troff output to LaserJet escape sequences.
> The laserJet supports RS-232C and RS-422 -- note that this "support"
> consists of only 4 lines (signal ground, hard ground, received data, and
> transmited data [pins 1,2,3, & 7]), at 9600 baud ONLY - "The LaserJet printer
> is factory set for 9600 baud - to change your printer`s baud rate, call your
> HP Dealer", and Xon/Xoff.
> There shouldn't be any reason that what you want to do is impossible. The
> LaserJet is indeed RS-232C, so you should be able to hook it up to any
> interface that supports (say) a terminal. One potential problem is that the
> printer is nonconfigurable in that it insists on running at 9600 baud 8
> bits, so if you can't deal with that, you may be in trouble.
---------------------
>> Finally, is anyone aware of any weaknesses or limitations of the
>> LaserJet printer that the manual or promotional material does not reveal?
> 1) The 100 sheet paper tray will really take only 100 sheets (there just
> is no more room).
> 2) The output tray will properly stack only about 50 sheets.
> 3) You must reset the default vertical spacing (among other things) (via
> escape sequences) if you want 66 printed lines per page.
> 4) The LaserJet does not expand tabs (they are ignored).
> The paper feed is ONE U-turn. This means that you put the paper upside down
> in the tray (ok, big deal), AND that when a mulit-page job comes
> out it is stacked in reverse order:
=====================================================
We have gone ahead and ordered the LaserJet. We will be writing a
driver for either troff or ditroff that mixes HP text with vtroff text
from the host VAX. This driver will probably access a user-created
file that maps the troff output characters to either HP font characters
or UNIX vtroff font characters. Typical lines in this file might be:
map font=R,size=10,chars=[A-Z,0-9,a-z] to HP,size=9,style=bold,\
orientation=portrait,...
map font=S,size=8,chars=[^A,^D,\] to VTROFF,file=/usr/lib/vfont/S.12,\
hp_resolution=300,...
If anyone is interested in such a program (available in 3-4 weeks),
let me know and I will mail it (or post to net.sources if sufficient
interest). If you would like to participate in the design, let me know.
Thanks,
Kent M. Montgomery ...|harpo \
Computer Science Dept. |utah-cs|beesvax|byucsa|kentm
Brigham Young University ...|seismo /
(UPI #6, AP #8)