Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!teddy!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!Goeke@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA From: Goeke@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: nroff and Proportional Printing on an FX-80 Message-ID: <7138@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 9-Jan-85 09:37:26 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.7138 Posted: Wed Jan 9 09:37:26 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 06:37:23 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 26 Just before I was about to start writing my own code for handling simple text going to my FX-80 in proportional mode, I looked one last time at 'nroff' to see if it couldn't be fudged to do the job. (An aside: I'm running VENIX/11 and I don't have the source for 'nroff', only a brief description of the -T tables which clearly indicate one can't possibly do this.) Lo and behold! With a couple of hours of effort I got the old FX humming along, properly putting in 1/6 em spaces to fill out lines, and adding features like commandable narrow-space (NOT available in 'nroff' -- unless you modify the supplied table, that is). My problem is the FX-80. The only way I found to get it to move "a little bit" to fudge in the fractional spaces was to go into the dot graphics mode. My, what a dance it does when that command comes in the middle of a text line! The printer's effective speed goes down to a point which reminds me of overnight batch processing. Has anyone else faced -- and solved -- this problem? Should I be asking some other list? BTW, if there is any interest in the matter, I'll gladly share the secrets of the -T table with anyone interested in proportional stuff. (But then, I'm probably just the last to know.) Bob Goeke --> Goeke -at MIT-Multics MIT Center for Space Research 617-253-1910