versatec printers and fan fold paper

[cak at Purdue.ARPA]

From:  Christopher A Kent <cak at Purdue.ARPA>

We have a Versatec 1200A on our VAX (4.2) that we use for troff output,
among other things. We choose to use fan fold paper instead of roll
paper; it's so much nicer not to have to cut up your output on a paper
cutter.

Unfortunately, this is not all roses. All the standard macro packages
insist on just putting out cut marks as part of the footer, and in
order for us to use them, we have to hack them to put out a special
command that causes a hardware form feed. It works fine, once the
macros are fixed.

We have just recently converted to 4.2, and I tried to use vgrind for
the first time last night, and discovered that its macro package hadn't
been so hacked. I didn't feel up to it, but started thinking about the
problem again. It's really a pain to have to modify every macro
library; they're not portable, and we can't easily import other
people's macros. Besides, we now have a Symbolics laser printer that
understands cut mark page marks, so we either have two copies of each macro
package or magic in the macro package to understand the output device;
both undesirable.

It seems like the vcat program should be able to look for the cut marks
and do the right thing. I inquired about this (I wasn't involved in the
original solution), and was told that the cut marks don't always come
out evenly spaced; they sometimes actually come out slightly over a
page fold, so the form feed causes a blank page in the output. Or that
if a person outputs cut marks you might get spurious form feeds. And so
on.

On the other hand, I said to myself, the people that print troff output
on 11" wide plotters after rotating must know where a page ends; how do
they do it? Indeed, I can't believe that EVERYONE goes through this
crap like we do! After all, the Symbolics printer seems to be able to
parse the cut marks in the output stream.

So, does anyone have a better solution, or do you all use roll paper?

Cheers,
chris
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