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From: ttl@sti.fi (Timo Lehtinen)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: troff on non-laser printers
Message-ID: <1990Nov15.221817.18398@sti.fi>
Date: 15 Nov 90 22:18:17 GMT
References: <294@pepper.rc.nokia.fi> <1990Nov12.205327.3513@cbnewsl.att.com>
Reply-To: ttl@sti.fi (Timo Lehtinen)
Organization: Stream Technologies Inc.
Lines: 35


I think Nils-Peter is right in that the cost savings in using a 
dot-matrix printer or similar raw bitmap device are easily lost in 
added costs for disk storage and slower printing times due to dumping 
the bitmaps to printers over slow lines. Ensuring that files are only 
stored in troff source form or using compress(1) can help on the 
storage problem, but then again that will put a heavier load on the CPU.

However, I can see two justifications for troff output for bitmap
devices:

1.) The world is full of dot-matrix printers. It would seem that any ways 
    to prevent them from becoming obsolete would be justified in this 
    respect. 

2.) Troff output is sometimes required not only for hardcopy but also for 
    diplays, facsimile etc.   PostScript solutions to these are generally 
    quite expensive !

Having said that...

We have a bitmap postprocessor for ditroff. It can handle troff graphics
as well as text. The font support in it is based on the Computer Modern 
Typeface fonts. It actually outputs bitmaps in a generic format of a
PostScript image. That can then easily be filtered to a suitable output
format for the required bitmap device. If anyone's interested in this 
send me mail.

Timo Lehtinen

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