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From: stewart@houxf.UUCP (Bill Stewart HO 4K-435 x0705)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: HP LaserJet and troff
Message-ID: <851@houxf.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-Feb-85 17:05:02 EST
Article-I.D.: houxf.851
Posted: Sun Feb 10 17:05:02 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Feb-85 07:05:14 EST
References: <1265@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 41

At least two companies make troff postprocessors for the Laser-Jet
printer.  (By the way, they get discussed a lot in fa.laser-lovers,
which is also forwarded from an ARPAnet group).  The one I know less
about is 
	Elan Computer Group  - I don't have their address handy, but I
think they're in Los Altos, Ca.  A person to contact is Ken Greer at
hplabs (he works there as a consultant).  I saw a sample of their work
at Usenix, and it's pretty good.

	Textware International, in Cambridge, Mass., produces a line of
troff postprocessors producing output for the Laser Jet, the Xerox
2700, *700 ... 9700, and probably other things.  The person there is
Brent Byer.  I don't have his login handy, but it's probably
{harvard or wjh12}!textware!bb.  His software produces very high
quality output for the eqn equation program, boxed tables with boxes
that really line up, and sometime soon should be handling the pic
graphics stuff as well.

Both sets of software currently use the "B" font cartridge, which has
"Times" fonts in roman, bold, and italic 10-point, 8.5 point times,
14 point "Helvetica", as well as Courier 10-point, 8.5point, and
landscape 10-point.  The raster memory is only 53K at 300 dots/inch,
which gives you about 6 square inches - it's really only useful for
equations and small amounts of graphics; most of the text is handled by
the builtin fonts.  (Note that the Apple and Imagen printers based on
the Canon 8/300 engine provide tons of memory, but also cost more.)
Everyone is hoping that HP will come out with some downloadable RAM
font cartridges for use with user-supplied fonts, but don't hold your
breath.

	If you want proper addresses for Textware or Elan, send me
mail.  My usual address is {ihnp4, allegra, houxf}!ho95c!wcs.

			Bill Stewart
-- 
Bill Stewart	ho95c!wcs
AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
HO 4K-435 x0705   (201-949-0705)
allegra!ho95c!wcs
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