jeff@cjsa.WA.COM (Jeffery Small) (11/22/89)
I need a little assistance. I borrowed a HP laserjetII printer and successfully hooked it up to my 3B1. It prints fine, but when I produce screen dumps (shift-print), the aspect ratio of the output is all wrong. The resulting images are compressed vertically and need to be expanded by a factor of 1.5 (150%). (or the horizontal dimension needs to be shrunk!) I'm trying to produce some images for a manual I am putting together, so the proper appearance is important. The images in the UNIX-PC manuals sure look like they were produced on a laser printer and the aspect ratio is pretty good. Has anyone solved this problem before? Is there some setup for the printer which can deal with this (nothing was mentioned in the user's manual I had) or more likely, is there a filter I could hook into the lp driver to reformat the output. So far, I have been unable to track down anyone at AT&T who was involved with the production of the UNIX-PC manuals. If someone who reads this note knows how those figures were produced, I would really appreciate hearing from you. Thanks. -- Jeff Small C. Jeffery Small & Associates (206) 485-5596 uunet!nwnexus!cjsa!jeff 19112 152nd Avenue NE, Woodinville, WA 98072
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (11/24/89)
Jeff Small writes asking for assistance with UNIXPC screen dumps to produce
documentation on an HP laserjetII printer, and wonders how the original UNIXPC
manuals' screen dumps were produced. Well, hold onto your hats ....
I've been using a 10-year-old C.Itoh 8510 ProWriter 8-pin dot-matrix printer
(which is 100% supported by the UNIXPC's standard software (I wonder why? :-))
and the output ON THE UNIXPC is about as close to laser-quality as any printer
I've seen (including 24-pin "state of the art" printers).
A screen dump of the Mahjongg game screen, tiles 'n all, looks simply
incredible.
TeX printing (using the dvicit (TeX "dvi" to C.Itoh) driver) is camera-ready.
Even more so when you do a 50% reduction to the paper size used for the UNIXPC
manuals (which is exactly half a standard 8-1/2" x 11" ``A'' paper size).
I showed some samples to people at the office, and the people there mused
"Why do why need expensive PostScript (tm) printers when the eleventy-seven
thousand C.Itoh printers we have here are capable of output THIS good?"
Even my jaw dropped to the floor when I saw how GOOD the output of the C.Itoh
was on the UNIXPC. The UNIXPC has breathed new life into these aging printers.
So, it's my { SPECULATION | CONJECTURE } that since the print quality is SO
good on the C.Itoh as driven by the UNIXPC *and* that since the C.Itoh is
(suspiciously) the only non-AT&T printer appearing in the list of printers on
my system, that the UNIXPC manuals' screen dumps must have been produced on
a C.Itoh (or something VERY similar).
Glancing at the old docs for the C.Itoh, it seems it's capable of 160DPI
printing in its binary image mode, and it provides variable vertical spacing.
I've seen these printers (RS-232 serial interface) for $25 on the used market.
They're also available with a Centronics parallel interface which is what I've
been looking for since I have a dearth of RS-232 ports.
As an aside, the printing mechanism of the C.Itoh 8510 is EXACTLY the same as
the Apple ImageWriter and uses the same ribbons. If you've seen the hardcopy
from a Mac, then you'll know what I mean about the quality of the 8510. DEC
also OEM'd the C.Itoh mechanism for their LP-50 (or some similarly numbered)
printer.
And these babies are RUGGED. Mine hit the floor (falling from my desk) during
last month's earthquake, and suffered NO damage whatsover.
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]stailey@iris613.gsfc.nasa.gov (Ken Stailey) (11/29/89)
In article <24419@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: > >I've been using a 10-year-old C.Itoh 8510 ProWriter 8-pin dot-matrix printer >(which is 100% supported by the UNIXPC's standard software (I wonder why? :-)) AT&T sells that printer as the 470. INET stailey@iris613.gsfc.nasa.gov UUCP {backbone}!dftsrv!iris613!stailey
jim@syteke.be (Jim Sanchez) (11/29/89)
Where does one come by the dvi -> <WHATEVER PRINTER YOU HAVE> driver
you mentioned? I have never seen one posted to the net.
--
Jim Sanchez {sun,hplabs}!sytek!syteke!jim OR
Hughes LAN Systems, Brussels uunet!prlb2!sunbim!syteke!jimmark@gizzmo.UUCP (mark hilliard) (12/02/89)
In article <24419@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >Jeff Small writes asking for assistance with UNIXPC screen dumps to produce > >So, it's my { SPECULATION | CONJECTURE } that since the print quality is SO >good on the C.Itoh as driven by the UNIXPC *and* that since the C.Itoh is >(suspiciously) the only non-AT&T printer appearing in the list of printers on >my system, The 8510 has been renamed by ATT and is sold as one of their own printers. DEC also renamed it hmmm... LQ-50 and sells it. It has been a standard ATT printer for MANY years. Mark Hilliard N2HHR rutgers!rochester!kodak!gizzmo!mark
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (12/04/89)
jim@syteke.be (Jim Sanchez) in <626@syteke.be> writes:
Where does one come by the dvi -> <WHATEVER PRINTER YOU HAVE> driver
you mentioned? I have never seen one posted to the net.
Hmmmmm. 'Tis probably because no-one's posted them to Usenet; I don't recall
having seem them "here" either.
A quick check in my notes indicates TeX and TeX-related material is archived
on the Internet (for FTP retrieval) at:
labrea.stanford.edu [IP 36.8.0.47]
Stanford seems to have taken over what used to be at Univ of Washington, too.
There are other TeX-related materials at several other sites (such as misc.
dvi-to-<whatever>) but I don't have any list(s); would take a while to search
several hundred MB (on another system) for the pointers to who has what.
Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]