Path: utzoo!telly!eci386!ecicrl!clewis
From: clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: The best way to use ditroff with an HP LaserJet?
Message-ID: <888@ecicrl.UUCP>
Date: 16 Oct 90 18:48:18 GMT
References: <248@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis)
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 51

In article <248@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> matt@acns.nwu.edu writes:
>Someone here needs to use ditroff with an HP LaserJet.  What is the
>best way to do this?  I would like a free solution, if possible.

>I can think of at least two ways to do it, (psroff from Chris Lewis
>and GNU Ghostscript) but I would like to know about any other
>alternatives as well.

>I would appreciate any comments about psroff and Ghostscript or any
>other suggestions anyone might have.

Psroff is a great package written by a great guy.

;-)

But I don't think it's the one you want.  If it's *really* ditroff
you have, then you should use jetroff from Rick Richardson/PC Research
(uunet!pcrat!rick).  The Shareware version (posted on c.s.u a year
or so ago) works well.  The commercial version (*very* reasonable
price) is much better.  A fair number of fonts are available for
jetroff (it can use TeX PK's as well as SFP's).

You can tell whether it's ditroff by just typing:
	troff
If it says "phototypesetter busy" and quits, it's old CAT troff.
If it just sits there and does nothing, hit your interrupt key -
it's ditroff.

If it's actually CAT troff (which is what comes bundled with most systems -
ditroff is usually an extra-cost add-on), you just need psroff and
a source of fonts (HP or TeX PK fonts) - you don't *need* Ghostscript.
Psroff can emit HP/PCL to your laserjets, Postscript to your postscript
printers (or ghostscript for that matter), or ditroff to ditroff
filters (including jetroff, xtroff, tpscript and others).

IMHO: both the commercial version of jetroff and psroff 2.0 are
production-quality packages.  Psroff 2.0 has been sitting in Rich's
comp.sources.unix queue since July.  It's also available via FTP from:

	- gatekeeper.dec.com (16.1.0.2) as anonymous,
	  file /pub/misc/psroff-2.0.tar.Z,
	  courtesy Paul Vixie (vixie@wrl.dec.com)
	- cs.toronto.edu as anonymous,
	  file pub/psroff.tar.Z,
	  pub/psroff.patch[1-2].Z,
	  courtesy Mark Moraes (moraes@cs.toronto.edu)
-- 
Chris Lewis, Phone: TBA
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