device-independent troff -> raster

[Thomas J. Pusateri]

In article <196 at hico2.UUCP> kak at hico2.UUCP (Kris A. Kugel) writes:
>Well, now that I've installed the new hard disk,
>and gotten uPort nroff installed on my 6300+,
>I'm getting itchy to figure out how to use ditroff
>with this setup.  Unfortunately, all I have is an
>okidata 192 printer.  But I keep thinking, if I can
>write a filter which turns the instructions output
>by troff into rasters, I'll have turned my printer
>into a slow-crummy-but-servicable fake typesetter!
>ok, so it doesn't REALLY have enough resolution, it'd
>be fun to play around with anyway.
>
>1. Has anybody out there done such a thing?  (a previewer, perhaps?)

Well, having a similar problem with a unix-pc and an epson rx-80 dot
matrix printer, I came up with the following scheme:

	I use the ditdvi package that was posted to comp.sources.misc
by Ken Yap (v02i101) a few years ago. This turns my ditroff output in
TeX dvi output. I then can preview it with the tex3b1 previewer and
print to my epson with the dvieps filter. What comes out is beautiful
looking ditroff output. (I knew TeX had to be good for something!)
You'll need a bit of disk space for all of the TeX fonts though.

Tom Pusateri
National Biomedical Simulation Resource
Duke University Medical Center

pusateri at nbsr.duke.edu