Richard Neitzel (02/20/88)
Help! Can someone tell me how I can get nroff to format text to print correctly for either of my IBM PC printers. I have an HP Laserjet and an IBM PC Graphics printer. I'm trying to capture files via Smarterm- 240. If need be, I can also bring up Kermit to capture the file. Any help will greatly appreciated, since this would let me do all my printing at home "offline". Rich Neitzel
ptripp@udenva.cair.du.edu (ptripp) (02/23/88)
In article <9816@udenva.cair.du.edu> Richard Neitzel writes: >Help! Can someone tell me how I can get nroff to format text to print >correctly for either of my IBM PC printers. I have an HP Laserjet and >an IBM PC Graphics printer. I'm trying to capture files via Smarterm- >240. If need be, I can also bring up Kermit to capture the file. Any help >will greatly appreciated, since this would let me do all my printing >at home "offline". You should be able to do what you want to do. A couple possisble scenarios are: 1. If nroff will output to a file rather than a device, but do so as though it were writing to the device, then the resulting file could be downloaded via Kermit as a binary file, then that file could be copied to the printer port as a binary file with the command: copy file lpt1 /b for example, if your printer is connected to the first parallel port. 2. The other option would be to let nroff output directly to the screen as normal (the stdout device) as though it were outputting to the printer connected to the terminal, and let Smarterm echo what it receives to the printer. The only problem here is the possibility of Smarterm intercepting some control sequences for interpretation as terminal commands rather than printer commands. If your files are fairly simple as far as not having bold or underline or other printer commands to do non-standard text, then you should have no problems echoing the file directly to the printer or capturing the file then using the MS-DOS PRINT command or a simple copy file prn command to print the file on either of your printers. A lot depends on the nroff files that you want to print and the capabilities of nroff and Smarterm. Does nroff support the LaserJet and the IBM Graphics printers? Another option, which I would consider, but may not be practical if you have already invested a lot of time formatting a document in nroff, is to do everything on the micro. You could use a micro-based word or text processor, such as WordPerfect, and output directly to the LaserJet or the Graphics printer. WordPerfect will import plain text files. Hope this is of some help. Someone with more knowledge of nroff may be willing to offer some suggestions, also. Phil Tripp ptripp@udenva