Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!langdon
From: langdon@lll-lcc.llnl.gov (Bruce Langdon)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: TeX to ASCII (it's a little more complicated than that).
Summary: For dvidoc you format with fixed-width font, etc etc
Keywords: TeX DVI ASCII text
Message-ID: <2215@lll-lcc.llnl.gov>
Date: 15 Dec 88 06:15:04 GMT
References: <372@blake.acs.washington.edu> <389@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Labs, LCC, Livermore Ca
Lines: 30

In article <389@blake.acs.washington.edu>, mcglk@blake.acs.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen) writes:
> ...if I just TeX the source file, I'm going to get a .DVI
> file which uses the Plain TeX cmr fonts.  ...   If a line uses
> lots of "l"s and "i"s and "t"s, I'll get an awfully long line out of dvidoc,
> since TeX uses proportional spacing.

dvidoc comes with a few macros for plain and Latex that redefine the usual
fonts to all be a fixed-width font whose .tfm file is in the distribution.

> I'd *like* to have a single source file written in straight, Plain TeX, that
> produces a standard, run-of-the-mill .DVI file.  *However*, I would like to
> be able to specify an \input line that set TeX up for typesetting in ragged-
> right, fixed-pitch font, with a user-specified "characters per inch,"...
> This would be ideal for producing, say, documentation for a program in both
> a nice-looking typeset format on paper, and an on-line document..

Just what I'm doing with dvidoc. 
>   ...dvidoc alone won't cut it.
>   I need a set of macros which set TeX up neatly for fixed-pitch output.

Perhaps you haven't looked at it?
I did add some other stuff. Things like redefining \hsize and \enspace
in terms of `em', the universal character width, and redefining \medskip
etc in terms of \normalbaselineskip. I don't now have the macros on this system
but I'd be glad to share. Maybe someone can improve/complete them...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
	Bruce Langdon  L-472                langdon@lll-lcc.llnl.gov
	Physics Department                  14363%f@nmfecc.arpa
	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory       
	Livermore, CA 94550                 (415) 422-5444
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