Very Computer

Hi,
can someone tell me how I can print to a normal Epson dotmatrix
printer, without getting the staircase effect.

Also, i'd like to be able to print the man pages to the laser
printer, but they come out with all sorts of strange charactrers
in amongst the text?

can anyone help please,

Thanks
Robert

Quote:> Hi,
> can someone tell me how I can print to a normal Epson dotmatrix
> printer, without getting the staircase effect.

Quote:> Also, i'd like to be able to print the man pages to the laser
> printer, but they come out with all sorts of strange charactrers
> in amongst the text?

man pr | col -b > pr.txt

The "col -b" gets rid of the formatting codes you're seeing.

You can now print pr.txt on the laserjet in one of several ways:

--Move it to dos, open it with dos edit, make a minor change so the
file has to be saved (this converts unix line endings to dos line
endings) and print it from dos edit.

--Open pr.txt for editing and add as the first line:
 E &k3G
where   is created, in vi, with Ctrl-V<esc> (to get a real escape
code, decimal 027).  This resets the printer and tells it to handle
unix line endings.  It's good to reset the printer at the end by
putting an  E at the end of the document.  The printer will now
print with its default font and no left margin (you don't want a
left margin for man pages, since they're often close to 80 characters
wide).  If there are no downloaded fonts and no font cartridge in
the printer, it will print in courier 12-point (10 pitch, or pica)
print, a fixed-width font.

--Install apsfilter for the laserjet.

--Install an "if" filter (not using apsfilter).

--Write an awk script and a shell script to call the awk script that
includes the escape sequences above; you can use this over and over
without having to put the escape sequences in the files to be printed.

There's an earlier post in this newsgroup called HP Printer setup
use.  The filter installation is also explained in the handbook.

Piece o' cake, right?

Annelise

Quote:>Also, i'd like to be able to print the man pages to the laser
>printer, but they come out with all sorts of strange charactrers
>in amongst the text?

psroff -mandoc /usr/share/man/man${NUMBER}/${FILENAME}.${NUMBER}.gz

(where ${FILENAME} and ${NUMBER} describe the page you want to print and the
postscript printer is the default printer), or

groff -Tps -mandoc /usr/share/man/man${NUMBER}/${FILENAME}.${NUMBER}.gz > /tmp/${FILENAME}.ps
lpr -s /tmp/${FILENAME}.ps
(wait to print)
rm /tmp/${FILENAME}.ps

: >
: >can someone tell me how I can print to a normal Epson dotmatrix
: >printer, without getting the staircase effect.

: Unix files use only the Line Feed to seperate line, where DOS uses the
: Line Feed/Carriage Return pair. your printer needs the Carriage Return
: to start a new line. A simple printer filter that inserts a Carriage Return
: whenever it see a Line Feed will work.

There's an interresting example of a printer filter in
           /usr/src/usr.sbin/lpr/filters
(comes in source form).

: >Also, i'd like to be able to print the man pages to the laser
: >printer, but they come out with all sorts of strange charactrers
: >in amongst the text?

: The man pages are formatted with backspace underscore to underline,
: backspace and repeat of the character for bold. If you have a Postscript
: printer, you should format and print the document using either psroff
: or groff. For example:

: psroff -mandoc /usr/share/man/man${NUMBER}/${FILENAME}.${NUMBER}.gz

: (where ${FILENAME} and ${NUMBER} describe the page you want to print and the
: postscript printer is the default printer), or

: groff -Tps -mandoc /usr/share/man/man${NUMBER}/${FILENAME}.${NUMBER}.gz > /tmp/${FILENAME}.ps
: lpr -s /tmp/${FILENAME}.ps
: (wait to print)
: rm /tmp/${FILENAME}.ps

If you are using FreeBSD, the "man -t" command is far simpler:

        man -t printcap | lpr -Pps

Yet another advantage, apart from compactness, is that "man -t" will take
care of starting tbl or eqn if required ! (sometimes, man-pages _do_ contain
tables, X11 is a good candidate...)

Regards,
Philippe.
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P. Causse                       http://www.fdn.fr/~pcausse