Re: [Groff] groescp update

[Werner LEMBERG]

[Sorry for the late reply.]

> >> I should receive the copyright assignment paperwork this week, so
> >> I should be able to send you a working version of the driver
> >> soon.
> 
> The FSF should now have all the paperwork.

Thanks!

> > If the user selects font `R', the font really used is `latin1R'.
> > Consequently, you have to set up the ESCP fonts like that:
> >
> >   ascii: asciiR, asciiB, asciiI, asciiBI
> >   latin1: latin1R, latin1B, latin1I, latin1BI
> >   ...
> >
> > To activate this mechanism it is only necessary to add the line
> >
> >   family ascii
> >
> > to the escp's DESC file, providing `ascii' as the default.
> 
> This does look very interesting.  I won't do this for the first
> version though!
> 
> Presumably if I abuse .fam in this way, I won't be able to support
> selectable fonts (though the low end printers don't tend to support
> more than one typeface).

Please give more information on available fonts.

> I've attached the current version of the patch.  It's nearly
> suitable for inclusion, I believe.  My only real issue is page
> breaks: the page length (nlines) is set to 60, but I get >60 (65)
> lines in the output.

You have to make a distinction between the paper length GNU troff uses
(as set with the .pl request) and the physical paper length provided
by the output device.  The function xxx_printer::end_page gets the
troff paper length as a parameter; it is up to the device to decide
what to do with that value.  grotty, for example, takes the troff
paper length directly as the `physical' paper length.  grops, on the
other hand, ignores the parameter since the paper dimensions have been
set with the `-p' option.  I assume that ESC/P printers have the
ability to set the physical paper length, so you should add support
for a `-p' command line option.

> If I look at the groescp manpage with
> 
>   cat man/man1/groescp.1 | bin/groff -man -Tescp
> 
> there are 3 blank lines at the top of each page (and I get page
> headers and footers), but when I do the same for groff_char, I get
> no leading spaces, but no headers and footers apart from the start
> and end.  Is the header and footer control in the man page?

The man macro package controls headers and footers.  For tty output,
the output is formatted by default to pretend a single, very long
page.  Read the groff_man(7) man page for more information.


    Werner