mrd@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Michael DeCorte) (01/22/89)
[this really doesn't belong in wizard. I have directed followups to comp.text] In article <1269@etive.ed.ac.uk> sam@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (S. Manoharan) writes: >The disadvantage I found with TeX was there is >no way to get a readable output of the TeX file on an >ordinary line-printer. You can get TeX to do line-printers with care. dvidoc (PLUG: get it from the TeX depository here at Clarkson) does it. It really only works in LaTeX but can be made to work with TeX. Bascially it replaces all of the variable width fonts with mono spaced fonts and redefies some macros. Realise this is a hack: you can't do math; use pictex; use latex picture fonts. This isn't unreasonable as lineprinters don't do these sort of things. If you want my honest opinion, if you really want to use line-printers use your favorite *roff but if you primarilly use laser printers and every now and then need to generate line-printer output (say for distribution of docs on the net) then use LaTeX. It really does do the best job when it comes to typesetting text and math on a bit-image printer. -- Michael DeCorte // (315)265-2439 // P.O. Box 652, Potsdam, NY 13676 Internet: mrd@sun.soe.clarkson.edu // Bitnet: mrd@clutx.bitnet --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clarkson Archive Server // commands = help, index, send, path archive-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu archive-server%sun.soe.clarkson.edu@omnigate.bitnet dumb1!dumb2!dumb3!smart!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!archive-server ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) (01/23/89)
In article <1269@etive.ed.ac.uk> sam@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (S. Manoharan) writes: } }A few weeks ago there was an article on the net asking to compare }both TeX and roff. } }I tried to learn both and observed the following: }... } The disadvantage I found with TeX was there is } no way to get a readable output of the TeX file on an } ordinary line-printer. [ Laser prints cost $$$s as well as time, } and hence are no joke ] A "detex" tool to strip the TeX commands is } available but it does not produce readable output on the } line-printer/terminal. } If you mean the real (expensive) lineprinters you are correct, but I assume you mean ordinary cheap dot-matrix printers, for which drivers for Tex are available. They do in general print very slowly, but produce very nice results compared to nroff. >PS: Is there any tool to translate roff text to latex text >or vice versa?? [ I have a code ( crude! ) to translate roff to >latex but that works only for selected macros of ms package ] I have given some explanations in an earlier posting as to why it is impossible to translate troff to tex or latex. The existing tools handle a small part of troff, and most of the common macro-packages and preprocessors. But not the raw troff. Vice versa is also not available. But there exists a dvit Tex-dvi output to ditroff-dvi output converter. So you can use the same troff printer drivers with tex. (Don't know if that's PD). Paul. -- ------------------------------------------------------ |debra@research.att.com | uunet!research!debra | ------------------------------------------------------