Questions about nroff/troff

[Ken Greer]

> Does nroff even TRY (given a complete /usr/lib/term/* table) to move, 
> vertically or horizontally, points at a time?  Apparently not.
> 
> Is there a way of defining a printer table for troff like /usr/lib/term/* is
> to nroff?
> 
> My goal is to print fancy tables and fonts and stuff on a NCR 6416 laser
> printer.

1. Nroff *can* be made to move in units of 1 printer unit.  For example,
   we have a LaserJet driver table for Nroff that moves in 1/300 inch
   units.  Look at the Horz and Vert definitions in your Nroff table.
   They can be 1 if the other parameters are also so modified.

2. There is a way of defining new printers for ditroff -- but it ain't
   as simple as building a table.  At its easiest, it's about as easy 
   as writing a compiler code generator.  Very sketchy documentation
   may be found in troff(5) and font(5), if you have 'em (from
   the DWB manual.)

3. Yes, you can print all sorts of fancy fonts on a Laser printer,
   even with Nroff.

Gentle reader, please don't send me freeware requests for our nroff 
laser printer driver tables. Supporting Nroff/Troff is our *business*.
(That is, our only source of income.)  We do offer:

1. Nroff 2.0+tbl+lots of driver tables+other goodies for MS-DOS for $99.
   It's well documented, no less!

2. An enhanced diTroff et. al. with LaserJet+PostScript support 
   from $695 to $4995 on MS-DOS and UNIX systems.
-- 
Ken Greer
Elan Computer Group, Inc.
415-322-2450 
{ames,hplabs}!elan!kg