Re: [Groff] Re: Printing to Epson dot matrix

[Larry Kollar]

Manas Laha <address@hidden> wrote:

> The Epson EX-1000 should be capable of printing bit-mapped graphics, in
> which  case the best bet would be:
> 
> i) Produce Postscript output
> ii) Convert the same to Epson-compatible graphics format ...
> ...its likely to be rather slow.

 
> As for using the proportional fonts on the printer, you may do that
> using the second method. But you will very likely lose the justification
> of the right margin (and any column alignments that tbl might produce).

In the dim, gaslit years of 1983-1985, I was using nroff to drive a
NEC Spinwriter (a sort-of daisy wheel printer, but it used a basket-
shaped thing). I remember making a driver for a proportional font basket
that we had, but never actually used that in production. The driver I
*did* use (also home-grown) could do proportional spacing, move up and
down, and a few other things I can't quite remember. The other thing I
can't remember at the moment is how I got the right widths for each
character in the proportional basket.

Groff's architecture is quite different, though -- correct me if I'm
wrong and I'll be happy, but I guess the only way to take advantage of
the Epson's own fonts & carriage movements is to write a "grepson"
back-end.

        Larry