Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!samsung!umich!sharkey!wa8tzg!wwm
From: wwm@wa8tzg.mi.org (Bill Meahan)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: dvi driver for Deskjet
Message-ID: <1991May17.202342.883@wa8tzg.mi.org>
Date: 17 May 91 20:23:42 GMT
References: <9105160331.AA02365@june.cs.washington.edu> <1991May16.202152.11406@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: What, ME Organized?
Lines: 46

In article <1991May16.202152.11406@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> maher@clio.sts.uiuc.edu (Patrick Maher) writes:
>TeXhax@cs.washington.edu writes:
>
>>In texhax 91:021, Bill Lennox (glennox@calstate) requests information
>>about dvi drivers for hp deskjet and apple deskwriter. A driver for the
>>DeskJet is available at the user-friendly price of $50 from Arbortext Inc,
>>Ann Arbor, MI. Their phone no. is (313) 996-3566.
>
>This driver is the driver that comes with Kinch's turbo tex, which is
>just a compiled version of the Beebe driver for the original laserjet.
>It cannot print direct to the printer; you have to first print to a file.
>Since deskjet printing is done by sending a bitmap, this makes the driver
>useless for large jobs, and unnecessarily slow for small ones. So, you
>definitely should not buy this driver. (I made that mistake.)
>

Why not just get the Beebe code, hack the program and compile it yourself?

I did just that for my little 3B1 (aka UNIX-PC) because it seemed patently	
ridiculous to create a (multi-) megabyte file of the bit image, then
'cat' it to the lp spooler which immediately makes its OWN copy (yes, I
know that there is a command-line option to prevent this) and prints
from that.

A couple of simple substitutions of 'popen' for 'fopen' (with the
appropriate arguments) produced a dvi driver that pipes its output
directly to the lp spooler.  I could just have easily opened /dev/rawlp
and had the output go directly to the printer if I had wanted to bypass
the spooler (ok as long as nothing else wants to print).  Should be
equally easy for you PC folks.

Since the output code is part of the common stuff for all the drivers in
the Beebe kit, this approach is equally applicable to ANY of the
drivers.

If you can't hack C (this is C Programming 101 stuff, not tricky hacking)
or don't have a C compiler, you can probably find a somebody locally who
would do the job for a container or two of their favorite beverage
(mine's iced tea - lots of tea, lots of ice :-)

Of course, your mileage may vary.
-- 
Bill Meahan (WA8TZG)             |   Programming is simple:
wwm@wa8tzg.mi.org  OR            |
uunet!mailrus!sharkey!wa8tzg!wwm |   All you have to do is put the right
"Home for Cybernetic Orphans"    |   numbers in the right memory locations!