... HELP HELP ... TROUBLE PRINTING WITH eroff ...

[Steve Summit]

In article <690 at jc3b21.UUCP> david at jc3b21.UUCP (David Quarles) writes:
>I need some help on getting eroff to print the text (all of it) from a
>regular text file on UNIX.
>What happens is that several lines get left off at the bottom of a page 
>and then the second page does not have the missing lines but has just   
>somehow skipped text.  ALL I WANT TO DO IS TO TAKE A TEXTFILE AND PRINT 
>WITH eroff (for our HP Laserjet).

A *roff program is not quite the right tool for the job.  If
eroff is like troff, it is actually trying to do what you want
(i.e in the absence of any formatting instructions, print on all
lines of the page).  The problem is that most laser printers
cannot print all the way to the top and bottom edges of the
paper.  If you're going to use a roff-style formatter for the
job, you'll have to somehow insert enough formatting instructions
(simply asking for a default macro package such as -ms might
suffice) so that top and bottom margins will be generated to
avoid the unprintable regions.

For simple, line-printer output, laser printers (especially
PostScript printers) often use simpler filters designed just for
that purpose.  (Adobe's TranScript package has a program called
psof for this purpose, named for the Berkeley lpr printcap field
it occupies.)

Actually, since a LaserJet is more like a "normal" printer than a
PostScript printer, you might be better off just shipping your
file to it without using any intervening filters at all.

                                            Steve Summit
                                            scs at adam.pika.mit.edu