lp filter

[stevens at hsi.UUCP]

We have a very fast line printer (LP27) under 4.1 and it is handy
to use for nroff "draft" output.  The problem is that the line printer
filter (lpf.c) called by lpr strips out all underlining and also does
not handle form feeds correctly (the form feeds come from another program,
not nroff).  If you cat the files directly to /dev/lp the underlining
and form feeds work correctly, but the underlining is brute force by the
driver (every time a backspace is encountered a carriage return is output and
spaces are then output up to the correct column - very slow !!).
However, on a multi-user system, cat'ing directly to /dev/lp should be
frowned upon.

The LP27 also slews much faster than it single spaces, so a nice filter
to change all the blank lines output by pr, for example, to skip to
the top of the next page, would be nice.

Anyone hacked up lpf, before we tackle it ?

	Richard Stevens
	Health Systems International
	{ ihnp4 | decvax | hao | seismo } ! kpno ! hsi ! stevens