mcooper%oberon@USC-ECLC.ARPA (12/18/85)
Does anyone have a driver (post processor) for ditroff for the Xerox 2700? We have several 2700's on campus that I'd like to get ditroff running on. It doesn't look to difficult, but why re-invent the wheel? Thanks, mike cooper P.S. - I was told there was someone at OSU that had done this, but I was never able to get a message to them. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Cooper UUCP: ...!{uscvax, sdcrdcf, engvax, | | University Computing Services scgvaxd, smeagol}!oberon!mcooper | | University of Southern Cal. BITNET: mcooper@uscvaxq, mcooper@jaxom | | Los Angeles, Ca. 90089-0251 ARPA: mcooper@usc-oberon.arpa, | | (213) 743-3462 mcooper@usc-eclc.arpa | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP (12/28/85)
Our experience has been that getting ditroff to talk nicely to the
2700 is very difficult. We finally went with a product from Image
Network. It worked but we decided to junk it since we did not have
the source code.
The 2700 interface has no nice graphics support features. Instead you
have to draw line segments using characters from a font. We had some
preliminary graphics support from I.N. but it almost always hung the
machine and when it did not, the printer ran out of memory. Any but
the most trivial images will require tremendous amounts of memory on
the 2700 since it can only manipulate fonts, not lines or paths.
Also troff assumes it can access every font on the printer. For the
2700 this means that you cannot have any plug-in cartriges in the
printer when you are using troff. If you then try to print normal
jobs, you must download the fonts that used to be in the cartridges
from the host. Throughput is significantly affected.
Good Luck but I doubt the results will be worth the effort.
-cswlaser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP (12/29/85)
I've seen 2 or 3 packagaes to do this: *** Textware International, Cambridge Mass, 1-617-UNI-TEXT seems to be the best product. They also do stuff for the HP LaserJet and some other typesetters. PIC support available for 33% extra charge. ** Elan Computers, Los Gatos CA has a LaserJet product, and I think (?) they also do 2700s. They'd be the cheapest if so. * Image Network, somewhere in California. We have they're product, and I'm not real impressed. It's also the most expensive. However, someone else in our company had it, so it minimized the hassles with purchasing because the legal work for licensing had already been done. -- # Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G-202, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP (12/30/85)
We have a 2700 running fantastically under System V Release 2 using Image Network's xroff software package. They have really done a good job at updating it, as when we first got it, it did do only rudiementary graphics, but now, it does almost anything. pic works great for extremely complex charts, and I have yet to have xroff hang up the printer on anything... -- James R. Webb ihnp4!houxm!hropus!jrw
laser-lovers@ucbvax.UUCP (12/31/85)
To you since I don't want to foul the network: Right on! I work at Ford Divirsified Products in Dearborn Michigan. Specifically for The Electronics group known as EED. I had the task of trying graphics on the xerox 2700 off of a Prime 850 going through my own print spooling system that uses s Sytek LAN to do print serving for the building. I came to the conclusion that evne if the 2700 could hold the image info we sent it ... It just would not be worth it since the data requirements to draw a diagonal was 4 times the pixel length. It can down to it then that a single image of the kind we needed would take about 6 times the memory available in the 2700 at that time (2.5 years ago). I have only been on the net about a year but this is the first time I have seen anyone call Xerox to the board! ron tribble mb2c!eed092!ron
mcooper@OBERON.ARPA (01/10/86)
All the responses I received via mail in response to my query about running Ditroff on the Xerox 2700's were pretty well split on how wonderful (or not) it works. I did receive a phone call from someone named Mike Burke (from VLS????) saying he had the sources or something to that affect, but the message was so garbled (my office-mate took the message - he's an IBM weenie) I didn't get a phone number or even an email adress for this guy. So if you're listening, send me some mail, please! I also should have stated that I'm looking for *free* stuff and not a commercial product. There are few people here at USC who use troff and so I cannot justify spending money on it. I'm really just interested in the device driver for ditroff for the 2700 and not the sources to ditroff (I already have a hacked version of those). mike +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Cooper UUCP: ...!{uscvax, sdcrdcf, engvax, | | University Computing Services scgvaxd, smeagol}!oberon!mcooper | | University of Southern Cal. BITNET: mcooper@uscvaxq, mcooper@jaxom | | Los Angeles, Ca. 90089-0251 ARPA: mcooper@usc-oberon.arpa, | | (213) 743-3462 mcooper@usc-eclc.arpa | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+