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From: mhw@fithp.uucp (Marc Weinstein)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: how to print with troff on a UNIX pc?
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.234928.14575@fithp.uucp>
Date: 19 Oct 90 23:49:28 GMT
References: <74@docwrk.UUCP>
Organization: Weinstein Computers
Lines: 27

From article <74@docwrk.UUCP>, by srh@docwrk.UUCP (Steven R. Houser):
> have a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet connected to the machine.  When I used
> nroff, I just piped the output to lp.  But when I print troff files from ua
> or pipe them to lp, the DeskJet just prints raw troff output like this:
> 
> x T post
> ...
> 
> Why does my printer just print this instead of interpreting it?  Do I
> need to pipe it to another device?  Or doesn't the DeskJet understand
> trofftroff?

I'm not a troff expert, but troff itself produces fairly "unprintable"
output, as opposed to nroff which creates pretty much ASCII output.
In other words, troff output doesn't usually resemble the text you desire.
My understanding is that troff output needs to be piped through a
translator which knows your printer's language.  I recently bought a
HP Laserjet IIp and plan to use Device-Independent Troff (ditroff)
piped through a package called Jetroff, which converts the troff
output to Laserjet language.  Jetroff comes with a set of downloadable
fonts and knows HP's proprietary printer language, so it can select
fonts, set line spacing, do bold/italics, etc.  I've also heard that
the new groff supports Laserjets as well.

The OSU archives may have copies of these...

Marc Weinstein