plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) (06/07/91)
For kicks I have been trying to get nroff on my Xenix box to handle the proportional character mode on my dot-matrix printer. I haven't had much luck in figuring out the nroff term variables. I know what the documentation says but when does nroff use Char, Adj, Em, Hor, Ver and plot mode? All the experimenting I have done hasn't been able to uncover their relationships. Has anyone used this feature? Thanks, Larry Plona -- Sit denique inscriptum in fronte unius "Let it finally be written on cuiusque quid de rebus publicis sentiat the forehead of each man what he - Cicero thinks of open systems"
brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) (06/08/91)
In article <Jun.6.18.37.50.1991.13440@romulus.rutgers.edu> plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) writes:
<
<
< For kicks I have been trying to get nroff on my Xenix box
<to handle the proportional character mode on my dot-matrix
<printer. I haven't had much luck in figuring out the nroff
<term variables. I know what the documentation says but
<when does nroff use Char, Adj, Em, Hor, Ver and plot mode?
<
< All the experimenting I have done hasn't been able to
<uncover their relationships. Has anyone used this feature?
You have to create a new nroff printer driver and set up all of the width
tables for each and every character. Believe me, it just isn't worth the
trouble. Nroff was basically made for fixed spaced fonts, like 10 cpi and
12 cpi. I set up one nroff table for 15 cpi. If you want proportional
spacing, you need to use troff. But, I don't know of any tables for troff
to use for dot matrix printers. Somebody has to have drivers for dot matrix
printers somewhere for a nroff or troff look-a-like.
--
harvard\ att!nicmad\ spool.cs.wisc.edu!astroatc!vidiot!brown
Vidiot ucbvax!uwvax..........!astroatc!vidiot!brown
rutgers/ decvax!nicmad/ INTERNET:vidiot!brown%astroatc@spool.cs.wisc.educlewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (06/09/91)
In article <1889@vidiot.UUCP> brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) writes: >In article <Jun.6.18.37.50.1991.13440@romulus.rutgers.edu> plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) writes: >< For kicks I have been trying to get nroff on my Xenix box ><to handle the proportional character mode on my dot-matrix ><printer. I haven't had much luck in figuring out the nroff ><term variables. I know what the documentation says but ><when does nroff use Char, Adj, Em, Hor, Ver and plot mode? >You have to create a new nroff printer driver and set up all of the width >tables for each and every character. Believe me, it just isn't worth the >trouble. No kidding. It can't be done, because nroff won't use them no matter what you do. Troff will, but then the big problem is that troff doesn't emit ASCII. There are ways of getting C/A/T troff, ditroff or groff to talk to dot matrix printers (via a conversion to TeX's DVI and using epson drivers f'r instance) but it's kinda yucky. I know the pieces exist, but I don't know the sources for some of them. One way of getting nroff to use proportional fonts, is to write a shell script like this: echo MC nroff $* echo MC2 Where MC is the escape sequence required to get the printer to select a proportional font on the printer, and MC2 is a reset sequence of some kind. On system V, you'll should use the octal escapes, perhaps like this: echo "\033...\c" On BSD/V7 style echos, generating the octal sequences are hard, but suppressing the newline is done with -n (instead of trailing \c) echo -n "....." And finally, the result will be very ugly because nroff is assuming that all characters are constant width. Tables won't line up. Right justification won't work. Or, you could go whole hog and get ghostscript so that you could use a troff to postscript converter to drive your printer. Then you'd have pretty sexy output limited only by the resolution of your printer. But that may be extreme overkill for what you really want to do. -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Domain: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca UUCP: ...!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis; Ferret Mailing List: ferret-request@eci386; Psroff (not Adobe Transcript) enquiries: psroff-request@eci386 or Canada 416-832-0541. Psroff 3.0 in c.s.u soon!
plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) (06/10/91)
Actually, I've got it working somewhat now. What I did was express each character in nroff units and set Char, Adj and Em accordingly. I think most of the remaining discrepancies come from faulty estimates of the individual character sizes and the in accuracy of the printer in moving fractions of an inch. I realize that all of this is a farce but its become a mini- obsession with me. nroff could have been written to do a lot more with line printers. But its too late now... - Larry Plona -- Sit denique inscriptum in fronte unius "Let it finally be written on cuiusque quid de rebus publicis sentiat the forehead of each man what he - Cicero thinks of open systems"
roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (06/11/91)
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes: > Troff will [use character width tables], but then the big problem is that > troff doesn't emit ASCII. At least in classic C/A/T troff, you can do "troff -a" to get ascii output. Whether that can be made to be useful when printing on a dot matrix printer with proportional spacing or not is another question. -- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy "Arcane? Did you say arcane? It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"
roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (06/11/91)
plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) writes: > nroff could have been written to do a lot more with line printers. You're joking, right? At the time nroff was written, you were lucky to find a line printer that could do anything fancier than print a subset of ascii (i.e. no lower case) and do linefeeds and formfeeds. Even if you expand the definition of "line printer" to mean "hard copy terminal" that above is still largely true. -- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy "Arcane? Did you say arcane? It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"
plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) (06/12/91)
>> nroff could have been written to do a lot more with line printers. >You're joking, right? At the time nroff was written, you were >lucky to find a line printer that could do anything fancier than print a >subset of ascii (i.e. no lower case) and do linefeeds and formfeeds. Sorry, I did not realize that nroff source was sacred and unable to be changed. -Larry Plona -- Sit denique inscriptum in fronte unius "Let it finally be written on cuiusque quid de rebus publicis sentiat the forehead of each man what he - Cicero thinks of open systems"
pkr@sgi.com (Phil Ronzone) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun11.115142.8419@phri.nyu.edu> roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes: >plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) writes: >> nroff could have been written to do a lot more with line printers. > > You're joking, right? At the time nroff was written, you were >lucky to find a line printer that could do anything fancier than print a >subset of ascii (i.e. no lower case) and do linefeeds and formfeeds. Even >if you expand the definition of "line printer" to mean "hard copy terminal" >that above is still largely true. Actually, troff was written first. Nroff was a hack of troff that came after. -- Philip K. Ronzone (pkr@sgi.com) [OLD & HyperMedia Project] Silicon Graphics, Inc. MS 9U-500 work (415) 335-1511 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94039 fax (415) 969-2314 "Gibber at that, ye scurvy rats", pkr "Why, you little ...", Homer Simpson
brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) (06/12/91)
In article <Jun.11.15.32.56.1991.21125@romulus.rutgers.edu> plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) writes:
<>> nroff could have been written to do a lot more with line printers.
<
<>You're joking, right? At the time nroff was written, you were
<>lucky to find a line printer that could do anything fancier than print a
<>subset of ascii (i.e. no lower case) and do linefeeds and formfeeds.
<
<Sorry, I did not realize that nroff source was sacred and
<unable to be changed.
Of course the source is sacred. It belongs to the copyright holder and only
they are allowed to change and distribute new source.
But, that isn't the real point. If you want to do fancier things, the troff
program is what you need. Now I am speaking generically here, since old troff
is for the C/A/T phototypsetter. AT&T Documentor's Workbench is a redesigned
troff with generic output that used postprocessors to print the output on many
devices, one of which is a laser printer. There is the publically available
psroff (not the Adobe TranScript one) that works with old troff and supplies
output for laser printers. I'm not sure about other devices. There is also
the groff suite of programs, which is a complete replacement for DWB troff.
The Adobe TranScript package will take output from old troff and DWB troff
and send it to a PostScript laser printer.
It would be much easier to use DWB troff or groff to provide output and build
a post-processor to send it to your device than it is to try and rewrite nroff.
To me, nroff is a dinosaur. It has been replaced with the affore mentioned
programs. One should never think of nroff as being anything more than a way
to send ASCII output to a fixed pitch device, like your CRT and daisy wheel
printer. Line printers are included in this as well.
I said enough already.
--
harvard\ att!nicmad\ spool.cs.wisc.edu!astroatc!vidiot!brown
Vidiot ucbvax!uwvax..........!astroatc!vidiot!brown
rutgers/ decvax!nicmad/ INTERNET:vidiot!brown%astroatc@spool.cs.wisc.edunpn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) (06/12/91)
Poster wants to know if/why not nroff can be enhanced for variable width dot matrix printers. We supply the world with nroff; that is, all nroffs I know of come from the original Bell Labs version (except anything FSF supplies with groff). We haven't changed nroff in recent memory; the code has changed little since the 1970's. The current DWB 3.1 and 3.2 packages have a troff postprocessor called dnroff that permit you to use troff as a fixed-width printer formatter. Variable-width nroff is not contemplated. At some point we will drop nroff completely; instead, you would use the pipeline ... troff -Tnroff | dnroff | lp ... It is simply not worth maintaining and testing a program (nroff) that only works with 1970 technology devices. troff does both jobs. I will add there is a misperception that nroff is faster than troff-- it is not.
lewis@tramp.Colorado.EDU (LEWIS WILLIAM M JR) (06/13/91)
In article <1929@vidiot.UUCP> brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) writes: ... ...much dribble removed ... >To me, nroff is a dinosaur. It has been replaced with the affore mentioned >programs. One should never think of nroff as being anything more than a way >to send ASCII output to a fixed pitch device, like your CRT and daisy wheel >printer. Line printers are included in this as well. > >I said enough already. ^^^^^^ too much And what you said is hogwash. Given the proper version of nroff, i.e. one that uses one of the tabXXX files in /usr/lib/term with the -TXXX option, one can produce proportional output limited only by the printing device resolution. It takes a bit of work, but can be done.
plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) (06/14/91)
Philip K. Ronzone (pkr@sgi.com) > Actually, troff was written first. Nroff was a hack of troff that came > after. According to The UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike, nroff came first and troff was written as an extended version. Apparently, nroff has been frozen since. The only change that comes to mind is the move from binary to text driving tables. Again, I'd like to say that I think that nroff should have been (I realize that its pointless now) updated with the increasing abilites of cheap printers. One look at an nroff driving table shows that the basis is already there. - Larry Plona -- Sit denique inscriptum in fronte unius "Let it finally be written on cuiusque quid de rebus publicis sentiat the forehead of each man what he - Cicero thinks of open systems"
npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) (06/14/91)
Since the parentage of nroff is in question... I have two unfair advantages-- I was around when it was born, and I have access to the on-line data base of all Bell Labs memos ever written. runoff was the original grandaddy. I recall it was written by Salzer at MIT in the 1960's. Generated fixed-width line printer output, but did right justification, vertical spacing, etc. The date on the first nroff memo is 1973. It was intended to take advantage of the Model 37 teletype, which had lower-case letters (a breakthrough!), half-line spaces, reverse line-feed. The first troff memo is dated 1974. It was designed around the features of the C/A/T phototypesetter (no lasers then-- it had a rotating wheel with tiny film images of the characters.) Joe Ossanna wrote both programs. The essential difference between nroff and troff is troff's ability to handle variable-width characters, and to move freely around the page vertically and horizontally in small increments (1/720 inch). Thus, a "fancy" nroff that takes advantage of new printers would, in fact, be troff. Were the original poster to do the modifications to nroff he suggests, he'd get ragged right margins only, since nroff believes all characters are equal width and adjusts accordingly. For those who still want to venture into this, it is very easy to modify the troff font width tables in DWB 3.1 and 3.2 (they are readable ASCII files in a self-evident format) to agree with your favorite printer, call it prt. Then "troff -mm -Tprt file | dnroff" would do what you want (need width tables under /usr/lib/font/devprt).
brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) (06/14/91)
In article <1991Jun13.011722.913@colorado.edu> lewis@tramp.Colorado.EDU (LEWIS WILLIAM M JR) writes: <In article <1929@vidiot.UUCP> brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) writes: <... <...much dribble removed <... <>To me, nroff is a dinosaur. It has been replaced with the affore mentioned <>programs. One should never think of nroff as being anything more than a way <>to send ASCII output to a fixed pitch device, like your CRT and daisy wheel <>printer. Line printers are included in this as well. <> <>I said enough already. < ^^^^^^ < too much < <And what you said is hogwash. Given the proper version of nroff, i.e. one <that uses one of the tabXXX files in /usr/lib/term with the -TXXX option, <one can produce proportional output limited only by the printing device <resolution. It takes a bit of work, but can be done. I've never see a nroff driver table built for proportional spaced printing. The tables delivered with 4.3BSD are all fixed pitch devices. I've had to set up a couple of tables myself and have seen the area that appears to be for character widths. You are right about the amount of work. But, I have never seen any documention on building nroff tables. One tends to dig through the source for one of the tables to build another. But never having seen one for a proportional spaced printer, I was never able to build one for the Qume daisy wheel printer, using a proportional wheel. I wasn't going to even try to figure that out. I still believe that nroff was meant for fixed spacing devices PERIOD. For proportional stuff I moved over to troff. -- harvard\ att!nicmad\ spool.cs.wisc.edu!astroatc!vidiot!brown Vidiot ucbvax!uwvax..........!astroatc!vidiot!brown rutgers/ decvax!nicmad/ INTERNET:vidiot!brown%astroatc@spool.cs.wisc.edu
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (06/15/91)
In article <1991Jun13.200408.28043@cbnewsl.att.com> npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes: Thanks for the clarification... >The date on the first nroff memo is 1973. It was intended >to take advantage of the Model 37 teletype, which had >lower-case letters (a breakthrough!), No kidding. I still remember the hassles I had to go thru to get the only lowercase printer on campus to emit lowercase given only an 029 keypunch (which didn't support lowercase) as the only input device... Those were the days. >The essential difference between nroff and troff is troff's >ability to handle variable-width characters, and to move >freely around the page vertically and horizontally in small >increments (1/720 inch). Minor nit: 1/432's horizontally and 3/432's vertically. I know C/A/T codes rather intimately.... >Thus, a "fancy" nroff that takes advantage of new printers would, in fact, >be troff. Exactly. One of these days I should implement a dumb ascii driver in psroff. -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Domain: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca UUCP: ...!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis; Ferret Mailing List: ferret-request@eci386; Psroff (not Adobe Transcript) enquiries: psroff-request@eci386 or Canada 416-832-0541. Psroff 3.0 in c.s.u soon!
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (06/19/91)
npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes about getting nroff to work with printers having non-fixed-pitch fonts: ... > Were the original poster to do the modifications to nroff > he suggests, he'd get ragged right margins only, since > nroff believes all characters are equal width and > adjusts accordingly. It depends on the version of nroff. It's certainly true for the DWB 2.x versions of nroff, and for very old nroff. There were intermediate ver- sion(s) of nroff for which the "terminal description" did contain widths for every character. This was apparently intended to allow for characters which were multiples of the standard fixed width. However, it was possible with these nroffs to set the unit width to the printer increment, build up the character widths in multiples of this unit, and have nroff work with variable-width characters--*almost*. There were some bugs that prevented it from working completely. One of them had to do with underlining (as I recall, nroff assumed that the underline character had unit width) and I don't recall the others...it's been too many years since I tried it, but I recall the final result being "so close, yet so far." -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Simpler is better.
plona@romulus.rutgers.edu (Lawrence Plona) (06/19/91)
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) > There were intermediate version(s) of nroff for which > the "terminal description" did contain widths for every character... > However, it was possible with these nroffs to set the unit width > to the printer increment, build up the character widths in > multiples of this unit, and have nroff work with variable-width > characters--*almost*. There were some bugs that prevented it from > working completely...it's been too many years since I tried it, > but I recall the final result being "so close, yet so far." T H A N K Y O U. It is with this nroff that I have been driving myself crazy. Now I can give up honorably! - Larry Plona -- Sit denique inscriptum in fronte unius "Let it finally be written on cuiusque quid de rebus publicis sentiat the forehead of each man what he - Cicero thinks of open systems"