stevens@hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) (03/17/89)
I'm using the "xproof" program from the 630_pkg package from the
AT&T Toolchest. It's a ditroff previewer for the AT&T 630 MTG
terminal.
The package works, but the fonts look pretty bad. Since the terminal
has 100 dot/inch resolution, I was expecting better. (Most X-windows
terminals are around 100 dots/inch; I can't believe a Mac is much better
than this either.) There was also a fatal bug in the software, as I
received it from AT&T (an fclose on a NULL FILE pointer), so I was
wondering if anyone is using this program and may have some answers,
before I dig into it.
I see two ways to use the package. First, to get something that looks
pretty good on the screen you'll want to have ditroff use the font
widths for the actual fonts to be used on the display. However, I don't
see how to do this. There's an example on the man page that shows
"ditroff -T300" but ditroff from DWB 2.0 doesn't know about a device
named "300" (a Linotype 300, perhaps ?). Is this where the fonts that
came with the 630_pkg came from ? There's not even a README file with
the fonts that came.
Second, you can use the previewer to format the page as it will finally
be printed, so you can see the exact line breaks and page breaks. This
is what I'm doing, telling ditroff the output is going to a PostScript
printer (we use Adobe's TranScript package) but then sending it to the
previewer instead. I realize that with this mode the output may not look
great (since ditroff is placing the characters based on the PostScript
font characteristics, but they're displayed using the other fonts) but
I'll accept this to see exactly what the page layout looks like.
Richard Stevens
Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
stevens@hsi.com
... { uunet | yale } ! hsi ! stevensgwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) (03/18/89)
In article <336@hsi86.hsi.UUCP> stevens@hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) writes: >I'm using the "xproof" program from the 630_pkg package ... >The package works, but the fonts look pretty bad. Not yet having gotten our 630_pkg acquisition through procurement channels, I don't know for sure what fonts are provided. My guess, however, is that they're essentially the same as the ones in the 5620 DMD text+graphics host package. Those were optically scanned from some hardcopy sample of the fonts, and not manually cleaned up (so, for example, some + signs look like - signs). I kludged together enough tools to edit the 10-point Roman font, which is the default and therefore most commonly used, but it was a lot of work. What I really would like is a good DMD/MTG font editor; I'm sure one exists somewhere. Anyway, I don't know of any substitute for careful manual tweaking of fonts, at least not for this resolution. (For higher resolution Metafont might be acceptable.) >I see two ways to use the package. First, to get something that looks >pretty good on the screen you'll want to have ditroff use the font >widths for the actual fonts to be used on the display. The original notion was that one would use the DMD/MTG to preview output intended for printing on some other device, typically these days a laser printer. The best match to the actual DMD fonts is obtained via troff -Taps. It wasn't until "loadfont" came along that other uses for fonts other than defont were really envisioned (apart from specialized cases such as the Tek4104 emulator). Most of the newer fonts are specifically constant-width and are intended for general-purpose (non-troff) use on the DMD/MTG. >However, I don't see how to do this. You need an appropriate troff font description file. Your DWB documentation should explain this (if you're lucky; otherwise you'll have to figure it out). >I'll accept this to see exactly what the page layout looks like. Which is indeed the original motivation for "proof".