cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (08/16/89)
The good news:
In a world of software ripoffs, there are two companies (in my
experience) that generally give you good or very good value for your
money: SCO and MKS.
The bad news:
Even saints don't do it right all of the time.
The problem:
SCO troff and nroff come with drivers for nifty devices like the CAT
photo typesetter and the model 33 Teletype. Unfortunately, I do not
have access to the Smithsonian Institution, where I presume such
devices can be found. I kicked and screamed when they (the Computer
Center) pulled the O-27 key-punch out from under me, but I lost the
battle.
Here in Davis, in that jerkwater institution known as the University of
California, I have access only to such primitive devices as Xerox and
Hewlett Packard laser printers, HP Think and Quiet Jets, Epson,
Panasonic, and NEC (gawd, don't those names sound foreign and
subversive!) dot-matrix machines, etc.
While I realize that wanting to use SCO nroff with a laser printer is
rather like using Old Glory in lieu of charcoal starter for a White
House barbeque, I also suspect there must be a few other pinko,
subversives out there, who might not only have had the same wish, but
who have actually realized their carnal desires. Maybe there are even a
few real weirdos who have drivers for Epson, Panasonic, NEC, etc.,
printers, the same way there are a few nuts who drive Toyotas, Nissans,
Hondas, etc.
Is there any chance you might share your perverted "drivers" with me?
(I'm only interested in true hard core -- something that works with the
-e option and plot mode. Sneaking looks at Playboy when I was a
teenager taught me how to handle softcore. I want the real thing!)
Rhetorical question:
Should I keep my copy of SCO (classic) troff in the hope that
collecting quaint, but otherwise useless software, achieves the cult
status (and value) of first edition comic books, green-tinted cut
class, useless farm implements, or any other of the high-priced
{junk|artifacts} one can find in "antique" shops along Cal 49 in the
Gold Country?
Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
916-752-1636 (voice, fax [2300-0800 PDT])
916-752-0776 secretary
(bitnet) ehkinmonth@ucdavis.edu
(uucp) ucbvax!ucdavis!ucdked!cck
(telnet or 916-752-7920) cc-dnet.ucdavis.edu [128.120.2.251]
request ucdked, login as guest,
no passwordtpf@jdyx.UUCP (Tom Friedel) (08/16/89)
cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: >Should I keep my copy of SCO (classic) troff in the hope that >... troff as shipped by AT&T these days is really ditroff (device independent troff) If you can afford one of the fancy packages like Adobe's transcript, you will be able to use that postscript laser printer as effortlessly as lp filename to print text as well as roff ; Tom -- Tom Friedel Public Access Unix BBS tpf@prism.gatech.edu ...gatech!emory!jdyx!tpf (404) 320-7624 (404) 321-5020
randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) (08/17/89)
In article <1989Aug16.123946.25811@jdyx.UUCP> tpf@jdyx.UUCP (Tom Friedel) writes:
]troff as shipped by AT&T these days is really ditroff (device independent
]troff) If you can afford one of the fancy packages like Adobe's
]transcript, you will be able to use that postscript laser printer as
]effortlessly as lp filename to print text as well as roff ;
Even better for Laserjet or DeskJet people is jetroff.
Includes lotsa fonts, and support for tif and .pcx pictures.
Complete source is $50 for personal use. Contact jetroff@pcrat.uucp
for info.
Not affiliated, just a satisfied user.
-randy
--
Randy Suess
randy@chinet.chi.il.usdavidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (ody) (08/17/89)
In article <5134@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: | SCO troff and nroff come with drivers for nifty devices like the CAT | photo typesetter and the model 33 Teletype. Unfortunately, I do not | have access to the Smithsonian Institution, where I presume such | devices can be found. I kicked and screamed when they (the Computer | Center) pulled the O-27 key-punch out from under me, but I lost the | battle. | | Here in Davis, in that jerkwater institution known as the University of | California, I have access only to such primitive devices as Xerox and | Hewlett Packard laser printers, HP Think and Quiet Jets, Epson, | Panasonic, and NEC (gawd, don't those names sound foreign and | subversive!) dot-matrix machines, etc. Well if you ever get to the level of PostScript you could use the troff driver for that. Nah! Too easy. Besides, you'd need the sarcasm filter to keep from clogging the spaces between the bits. Seriously: tbl mydoc.n | troff -t -ms | thack | lpr -dlw bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM) {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
ecf_ulw@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Lee Watkins) (08/17/89)
In article <1719@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <5134@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: >| SCO troff and nroff come with drivers for nifty devices like the CAT >| etc.... > > Well if you ever get to the level of PostScript you could use the >troff driver for that. Nah! Too easy. > bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM) Ok, I keep reading about troff postscript "drivers", but I still don't know where to get one, or how well they work. I have DWB 2.0 ditroff (which I am stuck with), so can I buy software that will allow me to produce output on a postscript printer, where? how much?, or better yet, where can I get a free solution that we won't have to spend a year "customizing". And while I'm at it, what exactly IS transcript, and what does it run on (SYstem V UNIX?) There, I've been wanting to ask that for months, but I kept thinking I was missing obvious information so I just kept reading MORE postings.... Lee Watkins JHU Academic Computing
chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US (Chip Rosenthal) (08/18/89)
In article <9284@chinet.chi.il.us> randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) writes: > Even better for Laserjet or DeskJet people is jetroff. I have heard lotsa wonderful stuff about Rick's package. However, not for SCO's troff. Jetroff only works with ditroff input, and therefore you need to convert the otroff to ditroff. There is a program in the comp.sources.unix archives which does this (cat2dit), but my experience is that you get really goofy looking output, mainly due to problems with spacing. Admittedly I haven't played around with it a lot, so it is possible that some tweaking could fix it. So, I've fallen back to nroff. I've got a program which generates driver tables for the Laserjet. It is designed to generate tables for a variety of fonts, symbol sets, etc. I'd be glad to send out copies if this will help anybody. -- Chip Rosenthal / chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US / Dallas Semiconductor / 214-450-5337 "I wish you'd put that starvation box down and go to bed" - Albert Collins' Mom
clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis) (08/23/89)
In article <5134@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: >The problem: >SCO troff and nroff come with drivers for nifty devices like the CAT >photo typesetter and the model 33 Teletype. Unfortunately, I do not >have access to the Smithsonian Institution, where I presume such >devices can be found.... >Rhetorical question: >Should I keep my copy of SCO (classic) troff in the hope that >collecting quaint, but otherwise useless software, achieves the cult >status (and value) of first edition comic books, green-tinted cut >class, useless farm implements, or any other of the high-priced >{junk|artifacts} one can find in "antique" shops along Cal 49 in the >Gold Country? Actually, no. classic troff is quite useful. See point (3) below. This is your alternatives I've garnered from experience and playing around with such things: 1) Get ditroff (couple hundred bucks) and search around for some drivers. One driver of particular fame and excellence is Rick Richardson's "jettroff", which takes ditroff input and produces hplj output. I've seen some of its output, and it is just about as good as you can get on a 300 dpi laser (even a postscript one). Rick sells a supported version of jetroff for about $50 (different pricing for commercial environments) which includes fonts. This is some of Rick's contact info: PC Research, Inc. 94 Apple Orchard Drive Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 (201) 389-8963 There is a shareware version available via anon uucp. I won't post Rick's blurb because it's kinda large, it's probably out of date, and I'll get flamed for commercial advertising. It might be a good time for him to post it, or at least readvertise its existance and how to get it. 2) If you have a postscript printer, obtain ditroff and a copy of tpscript (from comp.sources.unix archives, issues v15i013-017 I think). tpscript is a PD ditroff->postscript converter. tpscript is an excellent package. 3) H'mm, you can't afford ditroff, let alone a postscript printer. Well, have I got a solution for you: 1) In the queue on comp.sources.unix is "psroff", a back-end for classic CAT Troff, which will generates ditroff, postscript and HPLJ codes. Works very well. It should, I wrote it ;-) We've been using it quite heavily in production (technical reports, memos, and some pretty fancy publishing) for about 8 months. 2) If you have a HPLJ-compatible printer, I would not particularly recommend psroff's HPLJ's driver, because it doesn't know about font downloading yet (hopefully some kind soul out there will help me implement true font support into the HPLJ driver). Though, if you have all of the fonts and sizes you need on a floppy or a cartridge, psroff will drive a hplj just fine. However, if you use jetroff as the back-back-end, and psroff generating ditroff output, you've got full blown troff capability typesetting. 3) If you have a postscript printer, psroff works very well. Alternately, you can use psroff ditroff output with tpscript. (though, there shouldn't be much difference - I stole a bit from it). 4) The only problem with CAT->something filters, however, is you don't get some of the new ditroff features, like generalized drawing, eg: I don't think either pic or grap would work, but the only way to get them is to get ditroff anyhow. 4) There are other CAT->something filters, but they either ain't free (by a substantial margin) or they aren't as good as psroff. (natch ;-) 5) I keep seeing questions going by about ASCII -> postscript - comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.misc have quite a few. tpscript comes with a couple which are quite good. You mention that you have a NEC. Is it a 890? If so, run it in postscript mode and use psroff. -- Chris Lewis, R.H. Lathwell & Associates: Elegant Communications Inc. UUCP: {uunet!mnetor, utcsri!utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis Phone: (416)-595-5425
clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis) (08/23/89)
In article <688@vector.Dallas.TX.US> chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US (Chip Rosenthal) writes: >In article <9284@chinet.chi.il.us> randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) writes: >> Even better for Laserjet or DeskJet people is jetroff. >for SCO's troff. Jetroff only works with ditroff input, and therefore >you need to convert the otroff to ditroff. There is a program in the >comp.sources.unix archives which does this (cat2dit), but my experience >is that you get really goofy looking output, mainly due to problems with >spacing. Admittedly I haven't played around with it a lot, so it is >possible that some tweaking could fix it. Most definately. The difficulty is that CAT troff has its set of character width tables (/usr/lib/font/ft*) which are the CAT's widths, not the laserjet's. Jetroff presumably comes with a set of width files for ditroff, which, of course, CAT troff can't make hide-nor-hair of. Cat2dit is presumably ONLY the CAT->ditroff transliterator, for cat2dit don't really know what type printer you are *really* driving and wouldn't come with width tables. It is possible to tweak the ft?? files by hand. In Xenix, the ft?? files are merely a 224 character array, where each entry is the width of the character in 1/432's of an inch when printed at 6 point. Further, each entry is or'd with 0200 if it has an ascender and/or 0100 if it has a descender. The usual trick is to define the array in C (say ftA.c), and then "fwrite" it (ultimately to /usr/lib/font/ftA). I used to print test documents and guesstimate increments/decrements to the table until it looked good. My psroff package has a postscript utility borrowed from tpscript to generate ditroff font tables, and a utility that I wrote to convert them to ft* files. In the case of a Laserjet, the best method would be to take jettroff's width tables (I assume that jetroff has 'em - in ditroff) and run 'em thru my ditroff to CAT width table converter. The following is a (probably not extensively) hand-tweaked width table for AvantGarde-Book on a AppleLaser, showing character correspondence: > char ftA[256-32] = { /*AvantGarde-Book*/ > 12, /*space*/ > 11, /*!*/ > 0, /*"*/ > 0, /*#*/ > 20, /*$*/ > 28, /*%*/ > 27, /*&*/ > 13, /*' close*/ > 13, /*(*/ > 13, /*)*/ > 15, /***/ > 22, /*+*/ > 10, /*,*/ > 12, /*- hyphen*/ > 10, /*.*/ > 16, /*/*/ > 20+0200, /*0*/ > 20+0200, /*1*/ > 20+0200, /*2*/ > 20+0200, /*3*/ > 20+0200, /*4*/ > 20+0200, /*5*/ > 20+0200, /*6*/ > 20+0200, /*7*/ > 20+0200, /*8*/ > 20+0200, /*9*/ > 10, /*:*/ > 10, /*;*/ > 0, /*<*/ > 22, /*=*/ > 0, /*>*/ > 21, /*?*/ > 0, /*@*/ > 27+0200, /*A*/ > 21+0200, /*B*/ > 29+0200, /*C*/ > 27+0200, /*D*/ > 19+0200, /*E*/ > 17+0200, /*F*/ > 31+0200, /*G*/ > 25+0200, /*H*/ > 8+0200, /*I*/ > 17+0200, /*J*/ > 21+0200, /*K*/ > 17+0200, /*L*/ > 33+0200, /*M*/ > 27+0200, /*N*/ > 31+0200, /*O*/ > 21+0200, /*P*/ > 31+0300, /*Q*/ > 22+0200, /*R*/ > 18+0200, /*S*/ > 15+0200, /*T*/ > 24+0200, /*U*/ > 25+0200, /*V*/ > 35+0200, /*W*/ > 22+0200, /*X*/ > 21+0200, /*Y*/ > 17+0200, /*Z*/ > 13, /*[*/ > 0, /*\*/ > 13, /*]*/ > 0, /*^*/ > 0, /*_*/ > 13, /*` open*/ > 25, /*a*/ > 25+0200, /*b*/ > 23, /*c*/ > 25+0200, /*d*/ > 23, /*e*/ > 11+0200, /*f*/ > 24+0100, /*g*/ > 22+0200, /*h*/ > 7+0200, /*i*/ > 7+0300, /*j*/ > 18+0200, /*k*/ > 7+0200, /*l*/ > 34, /*m*/ > 22, /*n*/ > 24, /*o*/ > 25+0100, /*p*/ > 25+0100, /*q*/ > 11, /*r*/ > 14, /*s*/ > 12+0200, /*t*/ > 22, /*u*/ > 20, /*v*/ > 30, /*w*/ > 17, /*x*/ > 19+0100, /*y*/ > 15, /*z*/ > 0, /*{*/ > 2, /*|*/ > 0, /*}*/ > 0, /*~*/ > 6, /*narrow space*/ > 13, /*hyphen*/ > 27, /*bullet*/ > 27, /*square*/ > 36, /*3/4 em*/ > 18, /*rule*/ > 29, /*1/4*/ > 29, /*1/2*/ > 29, /*3/4*/ > 36, /*minus*/ > 18, /*fi*/ > 17, /*fl*/ > 23, /*ff*/ > 30, /*ffi*/ > 30, /*ffl*/ > 15, /*degree*/ > 20, /*dagger*/ > 0, /*section*/ > 8, /*foot mark*/ > 0, /*'*/ > 0, /*`*/ > 0, /*_*/ > 0, > 3, /*half nar sp*/ > 0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, > 0,0,0,0,0, > 20, /*registered*/ > 20, /*copyright*/ > 0, > 19, /*cent*/ > }; -- Chris Lewis, R.H. Lathwell & Associates: Elegant Communications Inc. UUCP: {uunet!mnetor, utcsri!utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis Phone: (416)-595-5425
rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson) (08/23/89)
In article <1989Aug22.175443.4382@eci386.uucp> clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes: > [ Kind references to the JetRoff ditroff to HPLJ Postprocessor ] > > There is a shareware version available via anon uucp. > I won't post Rick's blurb because it's kinda large, it's > probably out of date, and I'll get flamed for commercial > advertising. It might be a good time for him to post it, > or at least readvertise its existance and how to get it. I'll go out on a limb and mention the particulars to get the shareware version 1.1 (which doesn't cost anything to try) or to contact us to get the latest licensed, supported version 2.6. More details can be had by sending me mail, or by snagging "file_list" as described below. Also, there is one other fairly low cost way to get ditroff *and* HPLJ support on SCO Xenix. Look for the smallest ad in the back of UNIX Today! There's a company called Urban Applied Sciences, 201-242-7230, 24 Commerce Street, Newark, NJ 07102, that sells DWB 2.0 for Xenix for $175 with HPLJ support. ANON UUCP --------- We maintain a limited anonymous uucp capability. You can retrieve the source code and basic fonts directly from us. You will need a 2400 baud modem, or a Telebit Trailblazer. 1200 baud is not supported. For 2400 baud, here is a sample "Systems" entry for uucp: jetroff Wk2200-0300,Sa,Su ACU 2400 12013898963 "" \d\r\d ogin: jetuucp For Telebit, use: jetroff Wk2200-0300,Sa,Su ACU 19200 12013898963 "" \d\r\d ogin: jetuucp To get a list of the available files use this command: uucp jetroff!~jetuucp/file_list wherever_you_want OR: uucp jetroff!/usr/jetroff/1.1/file_list wherever_you_want NOTE: This telephone number is to be used only between 10PM and 3AM Eastern time during the week. If it is abused, we will remove the anonymous uucp access. Only 2400 baud and Telebit are supported. PC Research, Inc. 94 Apple Orchard Drive Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 (201) 389-8963 uunet!pcrat!jetroff uunet!pcrat!rick -- Rick Richardson | JetRoff "di"-troff to LaserJet Postprocessor| Ask about PC Research,Inc.| Mail: uunet!pcrat!jetroff; For anon uucp do:| Uni/JetFax uunet!pcrat!rick| uucp jetroff!~jetuucp/file_list ~nuucp/. | for UNIX/386 jetroff Wk2200-0300,Sa,Su ACU {2400,PEP} 12013898963 "" \d\r\d ogin: jetuucp
chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US (Chip Rosenthal) (08/24/89)
In article <688@vector.Dallas.TX.US> I wrote: >I've got a program which generates driver tables for the Laserjet. It >is designed to generate tables for a variety of fonts, symbol sets, etc. >I'd be glad to send out copies if this will help anybody. I've received quite a few requests for this, so I will post it to alt.sources. However, before you can use the nroff driver, you need to snarf my "colpr" printer filter. This filter implements (among the usual things printer filters do) a magic cookie to generate 8-bit characters. My nroff driver tables use this magic cookie to access the full LaserJet character set. I just posted "colpr" to alt.sources. If you are interested in the nroff stuff, grab "colpr" and hang loose for a week or so while I get "tablj" ready for posting. -- Chip Rosenthal / chip@vector.Dallas.TX.US / Dallas Semiconductor / 214-450-5337 "I wish you'd put that starvation box down and go to bed" - Albert Collins' Mom