laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (03/02/84)
From Furuta@WASHINGTON.ARPA Fri Mar 2 01:40:06 1984
The following exchange of messages (slightly edited) might be of
interest to the list. Please note that this is for information only.
It appears that Xerox licensing restrictions prohibit the
redistribution of the software.
--Rick
===============
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 84 12:32:54 pst
From: feldman%ucbarpa@Berkeley (Steve Feldman)
Subject: TeX for Xerox 2700
I remember hearing a while ago that someone was working on
a UNIX TeX driver for the Xerox 2700. Is it done yet? And if
so, how can we obtain it?
We have a 2700 connected to a VAX running 4.2BSD UNIX.
Steve Feldman
Tymshare
ARPA: feldman@Berkeley
UUCP: ucbvax!hplabs!oliveb!tymix!feldman
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 84 19:58:09 CST
From: William LeFebvre <phil@rice>
Subject: Re: TeX drivers for the 2700
Kim Taylor and I are currently working on a driver/filter for the Xerox
2700 that will handle these different flavors of input: troff (CAT/4
commands), ditroff, and TeX DVI (plus enhanced 2700 that understands
such things as backspaces). This filter and associated interface
programs (a troff front end and a whole new implementation for print
queues) were written in C on a Unix 4.1 system. The Rice community is
currently using the troff portion of this interface with reckless
abandon and we are awaiting distribution copies of TeX to let them
loose on that.
I do not yet consider this software to be at a distributable stage.
There is a lot of "polishing" that still needs to be done. In fact,
the weakest part of the system is the TeX interface. Rice has a spring
break next week and Kim and I plan to do lots of work then (you hear
that, Kim?). The software has never been tested on a 4.2 UNIX system,
but I don't expect any severe problems porting it. Another thing that
I feel is needed in the distribution is some sort of printer driver for
the queueing systems that are distributed with UNIX. As I mentioned
earlier, I wrote a print queue system for 4.1 because I just could not
cope with the one that was distributed. But other sites may be too used
to the old one to want to use ours. In addition, the 4.2 print queue
system (from what I have learned) is actually reasonable and
dependable.
The licensing questions which Richard mentiond involve the format of
the font file. We will not be able to distribute the source for any
program that accesses the 2700 font files. Since we ascertained the
format of their font files while working on a project for them, the
Xerox people decided that it was in their best interests to make this
restriction. Sorry folks! We have tried to keep the code as modular
as possible, the maximize the amount of source that will be distributable.
I have temporarily lost track of my "contact" at Xerox. I am very
reluctant to distribute anything without his say so (for reasons I
cannot explain). I was informed by him last year that Ohio State was
working on a public domain TeX interface for the 2700. Since then, I
have heard nothing about it. By the way, I am unaware of any other
organization that is working on a TeX interface. Ours was thrown
together at the promptings and urgings of Pavel. He really wanted to
work on this paper, see....
There is still the question of fonts. We were successful at generating
2700 fonts directly from the PXL files, but they are not tuned for the
printer. Consequently, they do not look very good. The italic and
slanted fonts look especially poor (severe staircasing -- we use the
term "jaggies").
Finally, I have no qualms about posting this information to the list.
But please stress that my information concerning Ohio State is scanty
and not guaranteed to be correct (or even close to correct).
William LeFebvre
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Rice University
<phil@rice>
-------laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (03/03/84)
From phil@rice Fri Mar 2 19:07:23 1984
Just for the sake of clarification, the distribution of the software
that Richard mentioned is not being completely prevented by Xerox
licensing restrictions. The source for part of the software will never
be distributed at Xerox's request. We do intend to distribute enough
of the system to make it usable. The exact date at which this software
will become available is still unknown because (1) we are waiting for
the go-ahead from Xerox and (2) we are not ready to distribute it yet.
I will make an announcement on this list when the package is ready for
distribution.
Perhaps Rick should have said "It appears that Xerox licensing
restrictions are prohibiting the immediate redistribution of the
software."
William LeFebvre
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Rice University
<phil@rice>