matt@eecs.nwu.edu (Matt Larson) (10/04/90)
Someone here needs to use ditroff with an HP LaserJet. What is the best way to do this? I would like a free solution, if possible. I can think of at least two ways to do it, (psroff from Chris Lewis and GNU Ghostscript) but I would like to know about any other alternatives as well. I would appreciate any comments about psroff and Ghostscript or any other suggestions anyone might have. Thank you, -- Matt Larson, Distributed Systems Analyst Academic Computing and Network Services, Northwestern University matt@acns.nwu.edu (708) 491-5366
clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (10/17/90)
In article <248@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> matt@acns.nwu.edu writes: >Someone here needs to use ditroff with an HP LaserJet. What is the >best way to do this? I would like a free solution, if possible. >I can think of at least two ways to do it, (psroff from Chris Lewis >and GNU Ghostscript) but I would like to know about any other >alternatives as well. >I would appreciate any comments about psroff and Ghostscript or any >other suggestions anyone might have. Psroff is a great package written by a great guy. ;-) But I don't think it's the one you want. If it's *really* ditroff you have, then you should use jetroff from Rick Richardson/PC Research (uunet!pcrat!rick). The Shareware version (posted on c.s.u a year or so ago) works well. The commercial version (*very* reasonable price) is much better. A fair number of fonts are available for jetroff (it can use TeX PK's as well as SFP's). You can tell whether it's ditroff by just typing: troff If it says "phototypesetter busy" and quits, it's old CAT troff. If it just sits there and does nothing, hit your interrupt key - it's ditroff. If it's actually CAT troff (which is what comes bundled with most systems - ditroff is usually an extra-cost add-on), you just need psroff and a source of fonts (HP or TeX PK fonts) - you don't *need* Ghostscript. Psroff can emit HP/PCL to your laserjets, Postscript to your postscript printers (or ghostscript for that matter), or ditroff to ditroff filters (including jetroff, xtroff, tpscript and others). IMHO: both the commercial version of jetroff and psroff 2.0 are production-quality packages. Psroff 2.0 has been sitting in Rich's comp.sources.unix queue since July. It's also available via FTP from: - gatekeeper.dec.com (16.1.0.2) as anonymous, file /pub/misc/psroff-2.0.tar.Z, courtesy Paul Vixie (vixie@wrl.dec.com) - cs.toronto.edu as anonymous, file pub/psroff.tar.Z, pub/psroff.patch[1-2].Z, courtesy Mark Moraes (moraes@cs.toronto.edu) -- 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)