Why TeX?

[Paul De Bra]

In article <2602 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <17998 at adm.BRL.MIL>, hxn8477%njitx.decnet at njitc.njit.edu (NJITX::HXN8477) writes:
>> With TeX and its companion font generator, Metafont, you
>> can typeset just about any document.
>
>What does Tex do about dumb (non-bitmapped) output devices, like letter-
>quality printers? Everything I've heard about it makes it sound like a
>great deal if you have a laser-printer, but useless for a dumb output
>device. What's the story?

For daisy wheel printers Tex is no good, and neither is troff. Use nroff
instead.

For matrix printers all sorts of drivers are floating around, both for
9-pin printers (Epson MX100 and the likes) and 24-pin printers (Nec P6/P7
and others). Any printer capable of graphics output can be used, though
it helps a lot if horizontal and vertical resolution are similar.
On a 9-pin printer one actually uses only 8 pins and and simulates a 24-pin
printer by printing 3 rows of 8 dots, each 1/3 of the distance of the pins
apart. The reason for doing so is that then the vertical resolution is
reasonable (usually 240dpi). NLQ modes on such printers do something similar.

So Tex-printing on decent matrix printers can be done.

Now the real story is that where laser printers print 4 pages/minute or more
(depending on how many fonts have to be downloaded usually) a fast 24-pin
matrix printer still needs 2 or 3 minutes to complete just one page, and
my old but faithful Epson MX 100 needs 20 to 30 minutes (of continuous
printing).

Paul.

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