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From: vg55611@ihuxy.ATT.COM (gopal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.apple,comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: Hooking up a Laserwriter to a PC or a 3B2?
Message-ID: <1943@ihuxy.ATT.COM>
Date: Fri, 24-Apr-87 17:59:34 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxy.1943
Posted: Fri Apr 24 17:59:34 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Apr-87 01:12:57 EST
References: <199@houxj.UUCP> <151@hubcap.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 33
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.ibm.pc:3550 comp.sys.apple:1175 comp.sys.att:364

In article <151@hubcap.UUCP>, mbrown@hubcap.UUCP (Mike Brown) writes:
> I am not sure about the hardware to hook up a Laserwriter (I think that
> it is an RS232 interface), but the Laserwriter is driven by postscript,
> i.e. the final driver to produce the pixel pattern is a set of ROM
> postscript routines.  This means that you either need to be running
> postscript, or have a program that will translate the output from your
> text processor to postscript.  I will be posting a summary of what is
> available to do this in comp.text next week.
> 
> NOTE: I am not a expert on the Laserwriter, so if there is another way
> to set it up, post it.  The only reason I know about the software is
> that I am in the process of hooking up a Laserwriter to a System V Unix
> machine.

The Laserwriter DOES have an RS-232 port (along with an AppleTalk port or
some such thing). We run ours at 9600 baud. The printer uses xon/xoff flow
control.

I have a program called "text2ps" (c source) that will convert text (ASCII
files to postscript format. We have been using this extensively to print
files from UNIX. The laserwriter, in our case, is hooked up as a shared
printer for multiple users. The original version was written by Stephen
Wade from Australia. I have made some modifications. Will let you choose
different fonts, point sizes etc.

I am looking for something similar to "text2ps" for the DOS world. I may
buy a C compiler and compile "text2ps" under DOS.

nroff/troff support for postscript will be available under UNIX for our
site very soon.

Venu P. Gopal
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