1st word on Output Devices and conversions
Mark Edwards
edwards at dogie.edu
Mon Feb 6 06:57:23 AEST 1989
(I know I have sent this to multiple groups. The purpose is for the
widest possbile exposure. )
Many times I have read articles from various people on the Usenet
requesting information on availability of different computer related
things/information (for example programs, specificatons, printer fonts,
etc.). I too have asked for such things. A while back I asked comp.os.vms
for an example of a print symbiont for VMS, and more recently I asked
the same group how they hooked up PostScript printers to their Vaxes.
Unfortunately for me there was no response to either inquiry. However
just last week I inferred the existance of such a program from an
article posted to that group. I ftped it, compiled and linked it, and
am quite satisfied with it. I estimate that program saved me many tens
of hours of work and frustrations (VMS system services and utilities are
loads of fun).
The following is a start of something that I think will be generally useful
to many people. Its mostly about output devices and conversions. I have started
a small glossary of related terms also. I can envision lots of directions this
might go off in. And as of yet haven't ruled anything out. At the moment it is
only sketchy at best and I am inviting comments, suggestions, addition,
general format changes, flames, or anything at all to help improve the list.
Thank you
mark
Internet: edwards at vms.macc.wisc.edu
Bitnet: edwards at wiscmacc
UUCP: {}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!edwards
==================== Cut Here ================================================
The Last Word on Output and Conversions
4 Feb 1989
0. Commentary
This whole thing started while I was investigating how to use TeX
with an Apple Laserwriter. Using the TugBoat Journal (?) I found that
Nelson Beebe had a driver for the Apple Laserwriter for VMS. I ftp'ed
it and was quite happy to get "postscript" output from my dvi file.
As far as I know this driver uses Computer Modern fonts only. I didn't
particularily care for the output and it creates large files that contain
fonts to download to the laserwriter.
I asked comp.text for a driver that used postscript fonts and soon was
ftping around the country for various drivers. The first one I found
that seemed to be what I want was "psdvi" which I got from
june.cs.washington.edu It included the postscript tfm fonts also. I converted
the program to run under VMS and got some output. Looked great. But....
I then found out that it chokes on mathmetics. This just wouldn't do.
A driver I found at uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (dvi2ps) seems to allow usage of
both the postscript fonts and the cm fonts for math and seems to be the
best candidate to convert to VMS. (It sure would solve many problems if I
were just using a Unix machine. Oh well.) During this process I picked up
lots of other information and decided to write it down before it got filed
in some forgotten place.
1. Introduction
The sum total of all the computer know how available on the net through
netnews or stored in ftpable archives (or other archives) is mindboggling.
However there are many great hurdles in sorting out all the information
available. One of the biggest obstacles is just gathering the relevant
information, whether it be in netnews or in some archive some where. The
task of discovering where some of the ftp archives sites are was made
slightly easier last December upon the posting of an article that listed
the various sites across the country and what kinds of programs the archive
excels in (by Edwards Vielmetti emv at starbarlounge.cc.umich.edu).
This is my attempt at compiling information about output devices
and such things. What I mean by output devices are display terminals,
laser printers, and typesetters. The kinds of information that you will
find here is about typesetting, fonts, converting some type of font
to another, converting device independent files to device dependent files,
converting various ways of storing pictures to postscript and so. I have
also started a small glossary of important or useful terms to help aide in
understanding. I orignally posted parts of this list in comp.fonts and
comp.text. But it has grown and includes information that pertains to other
groups now.
Please send all correspondence to me and I will post a new updated list
every once in a while. (If enough interest develops I may even offer
various formated versions.)
Thank you
mark
Mark Edwards
Systems Programmer
University of Wisconsin -MACC
1210 W. Dayton St
Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Internet: edwards at vms.macc.wisc.edu
Bitnet: edwards at wiscmacc
UUCP: {}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!edwards
1.0 Text Processing
1.1 List of formating and/or typesetting program
Program Operating System(s)
------------------------------------------------------------
TeX Most operating systems
troff (ditroff) Unix based
Scribe ???
Runoff VMS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20 (or DSR (DEC Standard Runoff))
WordPerfect 5.0 PC, Macintosh, VMS
MS-Word 4.0 PC, Macintosh
Ventura Publisher PC, Macintosh
Aldus Pagemaker PC, Macintosh
1.2 Programs to translate from one text processing language to another
Both of these programs claim a 90% translate rate.
s2latex Scribe to Latex
tr2tex troff to Latex
1.3 Programs that can generate dvi files
TeX
Ditroff
1.4 Programs to translate the TeX dvi files into device dependant files
dvi2ps dvi to postscript (Uses CM fonts for math) (Unix)
(many versions. Most recent at a.cs.uiuc.edu ??)
dvialw dvi to PostScript (Uses CM fonts only, no postscript)
dvibit dvi to Version 3.10 BBN BitGraph terminal
dvican dvi to Canon LBP-8 A2 laser printer
dvigd dvi to Golden Dawn Golden Laser 100 printer
dviimp dvi to Imagen imPRESS-language laser printer family
dvijep dvi to Hewlett-Packard Laser Jet Plus
dvijet dvi to Hewlett-Packard Laser Jet
dvil3p dvi to DEC LN03 Plus laser printer
dvil75 dvi to DEC LA75 144 dpi printer
dvim72 dvi to Apple Imagewriter 72 dpi printer
dvimac dvi to Apple Imagewriter 144 dpi printer
dvimpi dvi to MPI Sprinter 72 dpi printer
dvio72 dvi to OKIDATA Pacemark 2410 72 dpi printer
dvioki dvi to OKIDATA Pacemark 2410 144 dpi printer
dviprx dvi to Printronix 60h x 72v dpi printer
dviqms dvi to quic (QMS 800/1200 laser printer language) (VMS)
dvitos dvi to Toshiba P-1351 180 dpi printer
psdvi dvi to postscript (No math typesetting) (Unix, VMS)
settex dvi to compugraphics 8600 (VMS)
1.5 Programs to translate troff output file into device dependant files
troff2lj troff output to HP laserjet (Unix)
2. Font Information
2.1 List of currently known fonts
Font Description
------------------------------------------------------------
bdf - binary distribution format (Adobe Systems and X11)
fon - raster and stroke fonts (MS-Windows)
gf - generic font (TeX)
hershey - stroke (vector) fonts
onx - ??? (X10. Still supported by some vendors)
pk - packed (TeX)
pxl - pixel (TeX)
rst - raster (Downloaded to some Imagen printers)
snf - server natural format (X11)
Postscript - Adobe Systems
vfont - Versatec font (used by SunView and Berkeley (BSD 4.x))
HP LaserJet ??
Macintosh ??
2.2 More indepth description of font
2.2.1 Hershey Fonts: (excerpted from distribution found at ????)
- are a set of more than 2000 glyph (symbol) descriptions in vector
( <x,y> point-to-point ) format
- can be grouped as almost 20 'occidental' (english, greek,
cyrillic) fonts, 3 or more 'oriental' (Kanji, Hiragana,
and Katakana) fonts, and a few hundred miscellaneous
symbols (mathematical, musical, cartographic, etc etc)
- are suitable for typographic quality output on a vector device
(such as a plotter) when used at an appropriate scale.
- were digitized by Dr. A. V. Hershey while working for the U.S.
Government National Bureau of Standards (NBS).
2.2.2 vfont
Font formats for the Benson-Varian or Versatec.
Bitmapped. Found on BSD and Sun Unix systems.
2.3 Font Metrics
2.3.1 List of types of Font Metrics
Font Metric Description
-------------------------------------------------------------
afm - Adobe Font Metric
pl - property list (human readable format)
psfm - Postscript Font Metric
tfm - TeX Font Metric
2.3.2 List of programs to generate Font Metric information
Program Font Metric Description
--------------------------------------------------------------
MetaFont tfm (TeX) (also generates gf font files)
afmtopl afm to property list
pltotfm Property list to tfm
tftopl tfm to property list
2.3.3 List of programs to convert one type of font to another
Program Description
----------------------------------------------------------------
bdf2gf bdf to gf
bdf2vf bdf to vfont
bdftosnf bdf to snf (X-window Utility)
gftopk gf to pk
gftopxl gf to pxl
her2vfont hershey to vfont
mac2bdf Macintosh font to bdf
pktogf pk to gf
pktopx pk to pxl
pxtopk pxl to pk
vf2bdf vfont to bdf
2.3.4 Notes
Note: ( From: "ken at cs.rochester.edu" "Ken Yap" 27-JAN-1989 18:56)
Keep in mind that font metrics are not completely divorced
from the font bitmaps or outlines. The metrics describe the ideal,
scalable dimensions, while the bitmap files have the actual pixel
widths. Metrics files are used to describe families of fonts such as
TeX and PostScript fonts. Fonts for screens generally only have pixel
widths.
3.0 PostScript
3.1 Programs to convert to postscript
Program and Brief Discription
cif2ps CIF to postscript (Unix)
ccps Calcomp Standard plots to postscript (calcomp2ps) (Unix)
ditroff-to-ps ditroff output to postscript (Unix)
dvi2ps dvi (TeX) file to postscript (Uses CM fonts for math) (Unix)
giftops GIF format files to postscript
psdvi dvi (TeX) to postscript (No math typesetting) (Unix, VMS)
sun2ps Sun raster file to postscript (SUN)
sxlps convert SIXEL graphics format to PostScript (VMS)
tek2ps tektronix (4014) style plots to postscript
tif2ps tiff to postscript (Unix, MS-Dos (MSC5.0))
zeta2ps translate Nicolet Zeta plots into PostScript (VMS, Unix)
3.2 Postscript previewing
Postscript can be previewed on the Sun, and the NeXT computers. There is
also a program avaibable that allows previewing on PC's with ega cards.
ghostscript postscript interpreter for PC's with EGA cards
3.3 Postscript printer drivers/symbionts
laser.c print symbiont for VMS, available from texas
4. Where to get these programs
Unfortunately or not some of the programs come bundled with other
software or the name of the archive is different. Next time I'll
try to figure out some way to include this information also.
a.cs.uiuc.edu TeX sources (dvi2ps) ...
science.utah.edu TeX sources, most of the dvi drivers
simtel20.arpa pd2:<unix-c>, various TeX, Postscript sources
sun.soe.clarkson.edu fonts for X11, TeX sources
utadnx.cc.utexas.edu VMS sources (zetaps, laser, sxlps)
uunet.uu.net TeX sources, most of the postscript sources
Appendix A Glossary of Terms
The words in this glossary should be related to output devices. I
can forsee the need to include the various names of windowing packages
and what form of objects they display. For example NeWS is window system
that displays a version of postscript on Sun Workstations, but not necessarily
compatible with NeXTstep which uses Display Postscript from Adobe.
Term Brief definition/description
bitmap font uses pattern of pixels for each character. With raster
fonts there exists a different set of pixels for each
character in every fonts size you want.
Sometimes called raster
Display Postscript
EPS encapsulated postscript
font One complete set of characters in the same typeface
and size.
gif The following is an excerpt from the GIF image format
specification:
SCREEN DESCRIPTOR
The Screen Descriptor describes the overall parameters for all GIF
images following. It defines the overall dimensions of the image space
or logical screen required, the existence of color mapping information,
background screen color, and color depth information. This information
is stored in a series of 8-bit bytes as described below.
bits
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Byte #
+---------------+
| | 1
+-Screen Width -+ Raster width in pixels (LSB first)
| | 2
+---------------+
| | 3
+-Screen Height-+ Raster height in pixels (LSB first)
| | 4
+-+-----+-+-----+ M = 1, Global color map follows Descriptor
|M| cr |0|pixel| 5 cr+1 = # bits of color resolution
+-+-----+-+-----+ pixel+1 = # bits/pixel in image
| background | 6 background=Color index of screen background
+---------------+ (color is defined from the Global color
|0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0| 7 map or default map if none specified)
+---------------+
glyph a symbol that conveys information nonverbally. (Websters)
graphic font See vector font.
pixel the individual elements or dots of the digitized image.
raster font See bitmap font.
ReGIS Remote Graphics Instruction Set. ReGIS is designed for
simple synthetic graphics; it has primitives for drawing
lines and curves, as well as its own set of characters.
rtf rich transfer format(??). MS-Word only (??).
sixel The sixel protocol is mainly a way to encode a bitmap using
"printable" characters. Essentially, you take a vertical
slice of 6 rows of the image, turn the resulting 6 bits on
their side, then shift them over into the printable range.
Repeat until you've finished all the columns; then move down
by 6 rows and repeat. (The reason for this vertical slicing,
rather than the easier-to-handle horizontal slicing, is that
the sixel encoding was originally designed for simple,
memoryless dot-matrix printers, which need to print the data
as they receive it.) There are some additional codes to
specify things like the resolution the creator of the file
used. Color images are presented by sending over a couple of
bitmaps, one per color.
(From: Jerry Leichter LEICHTER at VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU)
serif any of the short lines steemming from and at an angle
to the upper and lower ends of the strokes of a letter.
(Examples: Times, Courier)
sanserif not serif. (Examples: Helvitica,)
stroke a mark or dash made by a single movement. One of the
lines of a letter of the alphabet. (websters)
stroke font see vector font.
tiff tagged image file format
vector font define lines that make up characters. Only need one
set of characters for each font. They can be drawn
at other sizes by varying the length of the lines.
Vector fonts can be easily rotated and scaled.
Sometimes called graphic fonts, or stroke font.
WYSIWYG What you see is what you get. In typesetting it usually
refers to a particular word processing feature that
displays things on screen as if they were typeset or
printed. TeX is not WYSIWYG while MS-Word is.
--
edwards at vms.macc.wisc.edu
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706
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