mikem%rand-relay@tekmdp (11/12/83)
From: tekmdp!mikem@rand-relay Glad to see the emergence of this group. I am not a programmer, but rather a user of the text formatting tools. As such, I am quite impressed with the capabilities now accessible with ditroff and an appropriate laser printer. Now for my quest: It seems that I have discovered many different interpretations as to what "device-independent format" for font files, really means. At our site, I have access to the following: ditroff (standard distribution) ditroff (uci distribution) itroff (troff with mods, and filters distributed by Imagen) Imagen laser printer At other sites at Tektronix, there are other printers and associated drivers: Symbolics laser printer APS (laser printer, I think) and also a Versatec printer What I have discovered is that for each different machine, OS, manufacturer, etc., there is a correspondingly different set of font files to go with them. Of course, the font I would like to use is available to me, but in a format that is different from the format expected by the driver for my laser printer. So I guess my question is simple: For the Imagen laser printer, has anyone done a dcan driver that will accept font file formats done for different machines? Or for that matter, does anyone have pointers to "a standard device independent font format", that can be created from existing font file information? Some possible answers: Imagen is well aware of this problem, and is working on a new dcan that may address this. Our site is to be a Beta site for this software. Are there any other efforts underway that address this. Lastly, the machine here is a VAX 11/780, currently running some form of 4.1BSD, and will eventually make it to 4.2 in the near future. Mike Mihalik MDP Engineering Tektronix, Inc. 503-629-1690 ...tektronix!tekmdp!mikem