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From: brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Q: nroff character sizes
Keywords: nroff term
Message-ID: <1932@vidiot.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jun 91 03:22:49 GMT
References: <1991Jun11.115142.8419@phri.nyu.edu> <Jun.11.15.32.56.1991.21125@romulus.rutgers.edu> <1929@vidiot.UUCP> <1991Jun13.011722.913@colorado.edu>
Reply-To: brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot)
Distribution: na
Organization: Vidiot's Hangout
Lines: 36

In article <1991Jun13.011722.913@colorado.edu> lewis@tramp.Colorado.EDU (LEWIS WILLIAM M JR) writes:
<In article <1929@vidiot.UUCP> brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) writes:
<...
<...much dribble removed
<...
<>To me, nroff is a dinosaur.  It has been replaced with the affore mentioned
<>programs.  One should never think of nroff as being anything more than a way
<>to send ASCII output to a fixed pitch device, like your CRT and daisy wheel
<>printer.  Line printers are included in this as well.
<>
<>I said enough already.
<        ^^^^^^
<       too much
<
<And what you said is hogwash.  Given the proper version of nroff, i.e. one
<that uses one of the tabXXX files in /usr/lib/term with the -TXXX option,
<one can produce proportional output limited only by the printing device
<resolution.  It takes a bit of work, but can be done.

I've never see a nroff driver table built for proportional spaced printing.
The tables delivered with 4.3BSD are all fixed pitch devices.  I've had to
set up a couple of tables myself and have seen the area that appears to be
for character widths.

You are right about the amount of work.  But, I have never seen any documention
on building nroff tables.  One tends to dig through the source for one of the
tables to build another.  But never having seen one for a proportional spaced
printer, I was never able to build one for the Qume daisy wheel printer, using
a proportional wheel.  I wasn't going to even try to figure that out.

I still believe that nroff was meant for fixed spacing devices PERIOD.  For
proportional stuff I moved over to troff.
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