Big Fun w/troff & Laserjets

[Earl H. Kinmonth]

In article <723 at titanic.UUCP> smacmcd at titanic.UUCP (Michael C. De Masi) writes:
>Hi people!
>
>I figured I'd ask again one more time before giving
>up totally.  Can anybody out there point me towards
>the necessary software for using a Hewlett-Packard
>Laserjet II printer as an output device for troff?
>
>I'm sure it must be possible, but I have yet to see
>a package anywhere which would work in conjunction
>with DWB to produce troff format documents on the
>above mentioned printer.

Which troff are you talking about, the original for the CAT
phototypesetter or the so-called (di)troff?

The case for the former seems nearly hopeless. Sources for several
conversion programs (output filters) have been posted. My reading is
that they can handle only one or two type sizes at best. Because of
this I have not bothered trying to bring them up since the result could
not be much better than nroff (for which you can write drivers fairly
easily) and much, much slower.

There are apparently several sources of filters for (di)troff including
a shareware item called Jetroff, a commercial product from Elan, and a
and a complete porting for MSDOS by MKS. The latter two firms are
Canadian, I believe. Look in the Programmer's Connection catalog for
prices and addresses.