Troff for HP deskjet?

Michael Grenier mike at cimcor.mn.org
Thu Aug 16 00:43:31 AEST 1990


>From article <1990Aug14.184818.2755 at esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>, by johnl at esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine):
> I'd appreciate suggestions on versions of troff that will run on my 386
> box running Interactive Unix and produce reasonable output on my HP Deskjet.
> (The Deskjet is mostly but not entirely compatible with the Laserjet line.)
> I have Interactive's DWB package which contains some version of ditroff, but
> it supports only APS and I10 typesetters, neither of which I have.  The
> eqn, pic, etc. do seem to work.


I'd recommend Scandia Mirosystems's TeX package. You can get it from 
PC Connection or direct. It supports the deskjet with both troff and
TeX.

> 
> Desiderata:
> 
>   -- reasonable use of fonts, particularly HP soft fonts since that's what
>      I have

It uses METAFONT to generate the Computer Modern set. There are about
100 different fonts included (each can be magnified to any size).
There are others available for free including AMS-TEX's fonts.

>   -- integration of graphics if possible (the deskjet can print full page 300
>      DPI graphics, very slowly)

GNUPLOT and PicTeX is included. The troff support for pic is not however (yet).
>From a troff point of view, all the different fonts and size are available
but not the generic line drawing stuff...Right now it converts the ditroff
output to a TeX dvi file (which doesn't support the nice spline line drawing
commands).

BTW, graphics on the Deskjet Plus is not that slow...with the printer driver
I posted to alt.sources a month ago, I can hit two pages per minute.

>   -- price, support, delivery
> 
> I'd prefer something that runs directly under Unix, though a DOS version
> would be OK if it works under vp/ix.  
> 

Price : $295 ... but call Scandia - they are running a big discount
   to get the product off the ground.
Support : BBS, phone, etc. 
Delivery : Next day air if needed :-)

> This has been discussed to death, I'm sure, please respond directly to me.

Strangely enough, there hasn't been that much discussion in this group lately.
Though I'll probably stir up some about advertising now  :-(

You could also try Jetroff which also uses TeX's fonts..I'm not sure if it
works on a deskjet or not. You can get it from uunet and other ftp sites.

The deskjet uses a different method of downloading fonts and, of course,
the HP manual doesn't explain how. Though with jetroff, I believe you can
download a bit mapped graphics image. I'd strongly recommend my
printer driver and not the stock interrupt driven ones. 10,000 interrupts
per second doesn't do much for UNIX performance :-)

  -Mike Grenier
   mike at cimcor.mn.org

OK...I own the company so this is probably biased. 

Scandia Microsystems
612-464-6056
texinfo at cimcor.mn.org


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