stickler@rc.nokia.fi (Patrick Stickler RC 910) (11/12/90)
Does anyone know if troff (and not merely nroff) can be used with any inexpensive dot-matrix or ink jet printers? The particular printers that I have in mind are the HP Deskjet or Cannon BJ-10e. What sort of graphics emulation is necessary to get 'reasonable' output? Epson FX, IBM Proprinter (X-24E)...? Can the HP Deskjet emulate an HP Laserjet? Please no suggestions to use some other typesetting software (e.g. TeX). I have to use troff and need some inexpensive way to get 'local' draft copies of documents. I need 'true' troff output - the differences between nroff and troff are too great. If anyone has had experience with using troff on a non-laser printer, I would *very* much appreciate any advice you could offer. Thanks, //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Patrick Stickler Nokia Research Center stickler@rc.nokia.fi (BIX:stickler) University of Helsinki stickler@hylka.helsinki.fi ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) (11/13/90)
In article <294@pepper.rc.nokia.fi>, stickler@rc.nokia.fi (Patrick Stickler RC 910) writes: > Does anyone know if troff (and not merely nroff) can be used with > any inexpensive dot-matrix or ink jet printers? The particular > printers that I have in mind are the HP Deskjet or Cannon BJ-10e. > What sort of graphics emulation is necessary to get 'reasonable' > output? Epson FX, IBM Proprinter (X-24E)...? Can the HP Deskjet > emulate an HP Laserjet? > We (troff supporters) used to put a lot of effort into this, but the testing just got out of hand. If you can imagine, say, making a change to tbl, then testing on nroff and troff for PostScript, Epson, ProPrinter, LaserJet, DeskJet, APS, etc. on each of SunOS, BSD, System 5.2, System 5.3, System 5.4, UTS, (get the picture?) We have pretty well dropped support for everything except PostScript, although we do offer a rudimentary PCL (LaserJet), Impress (Imagen) and Xerox (X9700) package. Yes, DeskJet is annoyingly different from LaserJet, and for no good reason. If you are doing this to "save money" you may well be spending more money on hard disks on your host to store bitmaps than you are saving on the printer (PostScript doesn't need bitmap files). Certainly, anyone with a DWB source license is welcome to take any of the postprocessors we provide (e.g., dpcl) and modify it to act as a translator from troff output to whatever your printer thinks it needs. As a business case, any one who objects to spending $2,000 to buy a good printer is unlikely to pay much for the software to support a dot matrix device. Perhaps the Free Software Folks will oblige, but my message is: don't count on the marketplace to solve this one. We are even recommending all the internal AT&T LaserJet owners upgrade to PostScript via the new Adobe cartridge. My personal opinion is that to get "'reasonable' output" on most of the devices mentioned you would have to ingest large quantities of perception-altering substances.
clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (11/14/90)
In article <294@pepper.rc.nokia.fi> stickler@rc.nokia.fi (Patrick Stickler RC 910) writes: >Does anyone know if troff (and not merely nroff) can be used with >any inexpensive dot-matrix or ink jet printers? The particular >printers that I have in mind are the HP Deskjet or Cannon BJ-10e. >What sort of graphics emulation is necessary to get 'reasonable' >output? Epson FX, IBM Proprinter (X-24E)...? Can the HP Deskjet >emulate an HP Laserjet? My understanding is that a Deskjet is moderately similar to the Laserjet except that font downloading is completely different. It is also my understanding that Psroff will work with *old* (CAT) troff and generate codes that are more-or-less useable on the Deskjet using the HPLJ code, however, the font downloading facilities of psroff won't work. I've finally given up on c.s.u and c.s.m for posting psroff - wait for it in alt.sources. -- Chris Lewis, Phone: TBA UUCP: uunet!utai!lsuc!ecicrl!clewis Moderator of the Ferret Mailing List (ferret-request@eci386) Psroff mailing list (psroff-request@eci386)
ttl@sti.fi (Timo Lehtinen) (11/16/90)
I think Nils-Peter is right in that the cost savings in using a
dot-matrix printer or similar raw bitmap device are easily lost in
added costs for disk storage and slower printing times due to dumping
the bitmaps to printers over slow lines. Ensuring that files are only
stored in troff source form or using compress(1) can help on the
storage problem, but then again that will put a heavier load on the CPU.
However, I can see two justifications for troff output for bitmap
devices:
1.) The world is full of dot-matrix printers. It would seem that any ways
to prevent them from becoming obsolete would be justified in this
respect.
2.) Troff output is sometimes required not only for hardcopy but also for
diplays, facsimile etc. PostScript solutions to these are generally
quite expensive !
Having said that...
We have a bitmap postprocessor for ditroff. It can handle troff graphics
as well as text. The font support in it is based on the Computer Modern
Typeface fonts. It actually outputs bitmaps in a generic format of a
PostScript image. That can then easily be filtered to a suitable output
format for the required bitmap device. If anyone's interested in this
send me mail.
Timo Lehtinen
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