artp@motbos.UUCP (03/04/87)
Does anyone out there have experience in embedding non-printing ASCII characters
in an nroff file ? For example, the NEC Laser Printers use an ASCII FS (Form
Separator) character to control various font / print modes. I have had no
problems embedding an ASCII ESC (Escape), but the FS is stripped out.
I have tried using translations (.tr), escape character redefinition (.ec),
multiple backslashes, \&, etc. All result in the FS being stripped out of
the output stream.
--
Regards,
Art
--------------------------------
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Fax: +1 617-932-9100henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (03/17/87)
> Does anyone out there have experience in embedding non-printing ASCII > characters in an nroff file ? For example, the NEC Laser Printers use an > ASCII FS (Form Separator) character to control various font / print modes. > I have had no problems embedding an ASCII ESC (Escape)... I'm rather surprised that you got away with ESC. Nroff/troff converts its input entirely into its own internal alphabet while processing, and if the character you want isn't in the internal alphabet, you're up the creek. There is no way, short of getting something else through and then translating that into the character you want. -- "We must choose: the stars or Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology the dust. Which shall it be?" {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
john@basser.UUCP (03/19/87)
In article <7786@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: [ here he quotes an anonymous person: ] > > Does anyone out there have experience in embedding non-printing ASCII > > characters in an nroff file ? For example, the NEC Laser Printers use an > > ASCII FS (Form Separator) character to control various font / print modes. > > I have had no problems embedding an ASCII ESC (Escape)... > > I'm rather surprised that you got away with ESC. Nroff/troff converts its > input entirely into its own internal alphabet while processing, and if the > character you want isn't in the internal alphabet, you're up the creek. That's correct. I just thought I'd supply the full story. From the ``NROFF/TROFF User's Manual'', by Joseph Osanna, section 10.1: _Input character translations._ Ways of inputting the graphic character set were discussed in sec. 2.1. The ASCII control characters horizontal tab (sec. 9.3), SOH (sec 9.1), and backspace (sec. 10.3) are discussed elsewhere. The newline delimits input lines. In addition, STX, ETX, ENQ, ACK and BEL are accepted, and may be used as delimiters or translated into a graphic with _tr_ (sec. 10.5). _All_ others are ignored. I too am surprised, in view of this, that the original poster ``had no problems embedding an ESC.'' Certainly it is ignored by both nroff and troff on our machine. I suggest that one should certainly not rely on that behavior; any nroff exhibiting it is, by the User's Manual, broken. John Mackin, Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia john@basser.oz.AU (john%basser.oz@SEISMO.CSS.GOV) {seismo,hplabs,mcvax,ukc,nttlab}!munnari!basser.oz!john Copyright 1987 John J. Mackin. Restricted redistribution prohibited.
fred@applix.UUCP (03/25/87)
The ADDENDUM to the NROFF/TROFF User's Manual that was released as part of the UNIX System III product states: the "Escape and BEL characters are valid characters in nroff and are accepted and passed to the output of the formatter. Troff continues to absorb these characters." This change was made to nroff to support those users that wanted (any) access to special printer features not directly supported by the nroff/troff language. Use of ESC is clearly not portable across (some) printers, and across (some) versions of nroff. Fred