armstrng@cs.dal.ca (Stan Armstrong) (12/01/90)
I am looking for a DVI to HP LaserJet series II (or Plus) driver which supports the \special command so that I can print from TeX in landscape mode. The Beebe driver which I have on our VAX/VMS system (DVIJEP) does not support \special's. (I have version 2.10). If I had such a driver, I could simply place the escape sequence to put the HP into landscape mode, include it with a \special command, and voila! my TeX document gets printed in landscape mode. Then all there is to do is make sure that the margins are set properly--a trivial task. There are two other solutions which I can think of off the top of my head. If anyone can think of something better, please let me know. First, if I don't find the driver, I could create a device control module which contains the escape sequence to put the HP into landscape mode. I would then define a form which uses that module to set up the printer at the beginning of the print job. Only thing is, I don't know if the escape sequence will be overridden by some later sequence occurring within the print job. Besides, since this solution involves yet another thing for the user to remember to do to print the document correctly, I do not favor it. Failing this, I read in the TeXBook about using MetaFont to create rotated fonts. I will try anything before I resort to this. I don't care to maintain any more fonts on this system than I absolutely need, thank-you. So, if anybody has or knows of a driver (preferably the source, executable and documentation) that will suit my needs, please let me know where and how I can get it. Otherwise, if anyone has any bright ideas how to print in landscape mode on an HP LaserJet series II printer from TeX on VAX/VMS, I'm all ears. Thanks, Ben. --- Ben Armstrong. Saint Mary's University, Halifax, N.S. att!clyde!watmath!water!dalcs!armstrng | ARMSTRONG@STMARYS.BITNET
rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (12/01/90)
> I am looking for a DVI to HP LaserJet series II (or Plus) driver which > supports the \special command so that I can print from TeX in landscape > mode. The Beebe driver which I have on our VAX/VMS system (DVIJEP) does > not support \special's. (I have version 2.10). > If I had such a driver, I could simply place the escape sequence to put > the HP into landscape mode, include it with a \special command, and voila! > my TeX document gets printed in landscape mode. Then all there is to do > is make sure that the margins are set properly--a trivial task. Note that it's really not quite this simple for most HP LaserJet printers. Specifically, the downloaded font specifies whether it is landscape or portrait, and the characters need to `rotated' for one or the other. So it's not just a matter of putting the machine in landscape mode. The newer LaserJet printers will even rotate the characters for you if you want, but this takes extra memory---it's usually faster to rotate the characters in the host machine. I have such a driver, but it only works on the Amiga (native and Unix); I have no plans to port to platforms such as VAX/VMS. But converting Beebe's driver should be straightforward; just get the tech docs from HP and away you go. If you do this, it might be worthwhile to get the docs for the Plus rather than the newer III's, so you can make the driver work with the older printers (which will make it work with the newer ones automatically.) And if you think this is a hassle, you would not believe the hacks necessary to get TeX to work on the QMS Kiss/SmartWriter printers back in '85 . . . -tom