21 lines
1.4 KiB
Text
21 lines
1.4 KiB
Text
These scripts address the need to get a non-postscript printer working
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quickly so documentation files and manual pages can be printed. The scripts
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work for printers using or compatible with PCL (Hewlett-Packard's Printer
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Command Language). A few printers (the Canon Bubblejet, for example) use
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neither PCL nor postscript.
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Simple scripts for printing a document (qp and qp.awk) are provided, as
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well as qpm for printing manual pages. These scripts convert unix line endings
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to ones PCL printers understand and select a font to use.
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Two more complex awk scripts--pcl.awk and pagin.awk--understand PCL
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printer codes when encountered in a file, and thus it is possible, when using
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these scripts, to change fonts, apply bold, underline, or italic to a word or
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group of words, do footnotes, preserve a table, and number pages in a default
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font. The scripts adjust for the font and size of type horizontally (how many
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letters to print on a line) and vertically (line spacing). Using pagin.awk it
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is also possible to double space, for example.
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Files with printer codes are provided to make it easier to put printer
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codes into documents. It is still awkward, but it needs only about 32k of
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space instead of the multi-megabyte files of more elaborate programs, such as
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the excellent apsfilter, which enables the printer to emulate postscript.
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-- Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.Stanford.EDU>
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