kentm@byucsa.UUCP (Montgomery Kent Melvin) (09/08/84)
<>
We (the graphics division of the CS Dept. at Brigham Young
University) are considering purchasing the Hewlett Packard LaserJet
printer but have several questions that neither the manual nor their
company representative could answer satisfactorily.
We are desirous to print troff-produced documents on the printer.
The particular application is a document of text embedded with
a large quantity of complex math equations using greek letters and
special math characters. The document is formatted using eqn and -me
macro commands. Currently, we print the document on a Printronix
line printer through the vtroff program. We would like to write a
filter that takes troff's or ditroff's output and converts it to the
appropriate HP LaserJet commands.
Here is where the trouble begins. HP has so far only put out a
few fonts of which none of them contain the needed math symbols.
Fortunately, the printer accepts from the host, in addition to text,
randomly positioned raster images. We can thus print the unavailable
math characters by sending to the printer a raster pattern (such as
those used by vtroff) for these characters. The printed document
would then consist of regular characters from HP's fonts along with
a number of small rectangular rasters for the other characters.
Has anyone out there attempted such a mixture of text and rasters?
Are there any weaknesses in such a plan? (I know about the 59K total
limit on raster images, but are there any problems in creating a large
number of small (500 pixel each) rasters?) Is anyone aware of a
driver to send troff or nroff text to the LaserJet printer?
Also, has anyone had success or failure at connecting the LaserJet
printer to a DEC Micro-VAX or similar computer. When HP's customer
representative was asked about this, she responded that the printer
does not support the DEC Micro-VAX. The brochure for the printer
mentions though that the printer uses a standard RS-232C interface.
Was the representative wrong, does the printer not have the RS-232C
interface, or does DEC not use the RS-232C interface? (The question
is probably trivial but my background is software).
Finally, is anyone aware of any weaknesses or limitations of the
LaserJet printer that the manual or promotional material does not reveal?
If anyone is interested in the information we receive, please mail
us a request and we will mail back a summary of the responses. Also
if anyone is interested in developing similar capabilities to the
above, let us know. We would like to coordinate efforts or at least
share what we develop.
Thanks, Kent M. Montgomery ...|harpo|utah-cs|beesvax|byucsa|kentm
----- News saved at Fri, 7-Sep-84 21:35:54 MDT
<>
We (the graphics division of the CS Dept. at Brigham Young
University) are considering purchasing the Hewlett Packard LaserJet
printer but have several questions that neither the manual nor their
company representative could answer satisfactorily.
We are desirous to print troff-produced documents on the printer.
The particular application is a document of text embedded with
a large quantity of complex math equations using greek letters and
special math characters. The document is formatted using eqn and -me
macro commands. Currently, we print the document on a Printronix
line printer through the vtroff program. We would like to write a
filter that takes troff's or ditroff's output and converts it to the
appropriate HP LaserJet commands.
Here is where the trouble begins. HP has so far only put out a
few fonts of which none of them contain the needed math symbols.
Fortunately, the printer accepts from the host, in addition to text,
randomly positioned raster images. We can thus print the unavailable
math characters by sending to the printer a raster pattern (such as
those used by vtroff) for these characters. The printed document
would then consist of regular characters from HP's fonts along with
a number of small rectangular rasters for the other characters.
Has anyone out there attempted such a mixture of text and rasters?
Are there any weaknesses in such a plan? (I know about the 59K total
limit on raster images, but are there any problems in creating a large
number of small (500 pixel each) rasters?) Is anyone aware of a
driver to send troff or nroff text to the LaserJet printer?
Also, has anyone had success or failure at connecting the LaserJet
printer to a DEC Micro-VAX or similar computer. When HP's customer
representative was asked about this, she responded that the printer
does not support the DEC Micro-VAX. The brochure for the printer
mentions though that the printer uses a standard RS-232C interface.
Was the representative wrong, does the printer not have the RS-232C
interface, or does DEC not use the RS-232C interface? (The question
is probably trivial but my background is software).
Finally, is anyone aware of any weaknesses or limitations of the
LaserJet printer that the manual or promotional material does not reveal?
If anyone is interested in the information we receive, please mail
us a request and we will mail back a summary of the responses. Also
if anyone is interested in developing similar capabilities to the
above, let us know. We would like to coordinate efforts or at least
share what we develop.
Thanks, Kent M. Montgomery ...|harpo|utah-cs|beesvax|byucsa|kentm
----- News saved at Fri, 7-Sep-84 21:40:57 MDT
<>
We (the graphics division of the CS Dept. at Brigham Young
University) are considering purchasing the Hewlett Packard LaserJet
printer but have several questions that neither the manual nor their
company representative could answer satisfactorily.
We are desirous to print troff-produced documents on the printer.
The particular application is a document of text embedded with
a large quantity of complex math equations using greek letters and
special math characters. The document is formatted using eqn and -me
macro commands. Currently, we print the document on a Printronix
line printer through the vtroff program. We would like to write a
filter that takes troff's or ditroff's output and converts it to the
appropriate HP LaserJet commands.
Here is where the trouble begins. HP has so far only put out a
few fonts of which none of them contain the needed math symbols.
Fortunately, the printer accepts from the host, in addition to text,
randomly positioned raster images. We can thus print the unavailable
math characters by sending to the printer a raster pattern (such as
those used by vtroff) for these characters. The printed document
would then consist of regular characters from HP's fonts along with
a number of small rectangular rasters for the other characters.
Has anyone out there attempted such a mixture of text and rasters?
Are there any weaknesses in such a plan? (I know about the 59K total
limit on raster images, but are there any problems in creating a large
number of small (500 pixel each) rasters?) Is anyone aware of a
driver to send troff or nroff text to the LaserJet printer?
Also, has anyone had success or failure at connecting the LaserJet
printer to a DEC Micro-VAX or similar computer. When HP's customer
representative was asked about this, she responded that the printer
does not support the DEC Micro-VAX. The brochure for the printer
mentions though that the printer uses a standard RS-232C interface.
Was the representative wrong, does the printer not have the RS-232C
interface, or does DEC not use the RS-232C interface? (The question
is probably trivial but my background is software).
Finally, is anyone aware of any weaknesses or limitations of the
LaserJet printer that the manual or promotional material does not reveal?
If anyone is interested in the information we receive, please mail
us a request and we will mail back a summary of the responses. Also
if anyone is interested in developing similar capabilities to the
above, let us know. We would like to coordinate efforts or at least
share what we develop.
Thanks, Kent M. Montgomery ...|harpo|utah-cs|beesvax|byucsa|kentm
----- News saved at Fri, 7-Sep-84 21:35:54 MDT
<>
We (the graphics division of the CS Dept. at Brigham Young
University) are considering purchasing the Hewlett Packard LaserJet
printer but have several questions that neither the manual nor their
company representative could answer satisfactorily.
We are desirous to print troff-produced documents on the printer.
The particular application is a document of text embedded with
a large quantity of complex math equations using greek letters and
special math characters. The document is formatted using eqn and -me
macro commands. Currently, we print the document on a Printronix
line printer through the vtroff program. We would like to write a
filter that takes troff's or ditroff's output and converts it to the
appropriate HP LaserJet commands.
Here is where the trouble begins. HP has so far only put out a
few fonts of which none of them contain the needed math symbols.
Fortunately, the printer accepts from the host, in addition to text,
randomly positioned raster images. We can thus print the unavailable
math characters by sending to the printer a raster pattern (such as
those used by vtroff) for these characters. The printed document
would then consist of regular characters from HP's fonts along with
a number of small rectangular rasters for the other characters.
Has anyone out there attempted such a mixture of text and rasters?
Are there any weaknesses in such a plan? (I know about the 59K total
limit on raster images, but are there any problems in creating a large
number of small (500 pixel each) rasters?) Is anyone aware of a
driver to send troff or nroff text to the LaserJet printer?
Also, has anyone had success or failure at connecting the LaserJet
printer to a DEC Micro-VAX or similar computer. When HP's customer
representative was asked about this, she responded that the printer
does not support the DEC Micro-VAX. The brochure for the printer
mentions though that the printer uses a standard RS-232C interface.
Was the representative wrong, does the printer not have the RS-232C
interface, or does DEC not use the RS-232C interface? (The question
is probably trivial but my background is software).
Finally, is anyone aware of any weaknesses or limitations of the
LaserJet printer that the manual or promotional material does not reveal?
If anyone is interested in the information we receive, please mail
us a request and we will mail back a summary of the responses. Also
if anyone is interested in developing similar capabilities to the
above, let us know. We would like to coordinate efforts or at least
share what we develop.
Thanks, Kent M. Montgomery ...|harpo|utah-cs|beesvax|byucsa|kentm