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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!hsi!stevens
From: stevens@hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.lang.postscript
Subject: side-by-side (landscape) for ditroff
Keywords: ditroff, PostScript, landscape
Message-ID: <520@hsi86.hsi.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jul 89 14:51:32 GMT
Organization: Health Systems Intl., New Haven, CT
Lines: 28

I would like to use troff and print 2 pages side-by-side (landscape mode)
on 8.5 by 11-inch paper.  This would make it easier to see how the final
copy will look and would also help in generating even page bottoms.

I'm using ditroff with Adobe's TranScript (psdit filter).  I would think
the best way to do this would be to modify the PostScript that is
output by psdit.  (Seems to me that PostScript would be ideal for
this.)  You could try and use a 2-column mode in the troff macros,
using a bigger than normal line length, but I don't think you'd
get an equivalent rendition of what you'd get if you took 2 normal
pages and put them side by side.  I want to make certain that what I
get in the side-by-side landscape mode is exactly equivalent (e.g., line
breaks and page breaks) to 2 normal pages placed side by side.

With 8.5 by 11-inch paper you could get 2 pages of a normal 7 by 9.25-inch
book format with about a 10% reduction, so you'd go from 10-point type
to 9-point, which would still be readable.  You could even use legal paper
and not have to reduce the point size at all.

Has anyone already done this ??

Note that I'm *not* talking about doing this with ASCII text files.
I can do that with "enscript -2r".

	Richard Stevens
	Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
	   stevens@hsi.com
           ... { uunet | yale } ! hsi ! stevens