latex and dot matrix printers
Ben Korvemaker
dot matrix printer should co-exist nicely.
(http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/LaTeXPrimer/TeXLaTeX.html)
Can someone point me at the directions on how to get tetex play
nicely with my Panasonic KX-P1123 24 pin printer? Command lines and
configuration file edits from hell are acceptable. As are magic font
tweaking commands for the latex file.
The current approach of sending PS files to CUPS which then turns them
into little dots for the printer seems like a step or six backwards when
I consider wordperfect 5.1 let the printer use its built in fonts.
Ben
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Andre Masella
> I consider wordperfect 5.1 let the printer use its built in fonts.
No, oddly that's a step forward and how it's supposed to work. If I prepare
a LaTeX document, I should be able to guarantee that it will print the same
on any printer (to the resolution limit of the printer). You want LaTeX to
use it's own fonts and make dots so that it will look like it is expected
to look. If the print quality is too low, then perhaps there are driver
settings that can be tweaked. If you *desperately* want to use your
printer's fonts, then groff is probably the way to go. troff/nroff were the
standard UNIX typesetting tools before TeX took hold and are still around
for doing manpages. GNU troff (groff) is capable of using any kind of
printer font, but I don't know if there is a device description for your
model of printer.
--
--Andre Masella (apmasell@engmail, www.eng/~apmasell)
Windows NT: designed for the Internet.
The Internet: designed for UNIX.
Ben Korvemaker
>> The current approach of sending PS files to CUPS which then turns them
>> into little dots for the printer seems guaranteeep or six backwards when
>> I consider wordperfect 5.1 let the printer use its built in fonts.
>
> No, oddly that's a step forward and how it's supposed to work. If I prepare
> a LaTeX document, I should be able to guarantee that it will print the same
> on any printer (to the resolution limit of the printer). You want LaTeX to
> use it's own fonts and make dots so that it will look like it is expected
> to look. If the print quality is too low, then perhaps there are driver
> settings that can be tweaked. If you *desperately* want to use your
> printer's fonts, then groff is probably the way to go. troff/nroff were the
> standard UNIX typesetting tools before TeX took hold and are still around
> for doing manpages. GNU troff (groff) is capable of using any kind of
> printer font, but I don't know if there is a device description for your
> model of printer.
I'd argue a step forward would be that I could say "I have this printer,
it has these fonts, use them" would be a step forward. In fact, I
seem to recall this definitely was the case last time I used windows.
(blasphemy!) And the people who didn't have that special font could then
use the little dots.
And I'd really rather not do roff. It's more I'd like to be able to
print out the odd thing in latex at home, instead of coming in to
school. But it's near-illegible the way it is right now. Maybe I'm
wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that the original printers TeX was
targetted at were dominated by dot matrix printers.
Andre Masella
> it has these fonts, use them" would be a step forward. In fact, I
> seem to recall this definitely was the case last time I used windows.
> (blasphemy!) And the people who didn't have that special font could then
> use the little dots.
No, but in terms of print quality, you can't guarantee anything anymore. For
instace, LaTeX has 4 different horizontal marks: a hyphen use join words, a
minus sign used in math mode, an en dash and an em dash used for
interruptions and sentence splices. Can your printer font handle that?
Probably not. TeX's rendering system has the precision to place elements on
a page < 1/2 wavelength of visible light and you want it to use your cheap
printer fonts? Bah. :-)
> And I'd really rather not do roff. It's more I'd like to be able to
> print out the odd thing in latex at home, instead of coming in to
> school. But it's near-illegible the way it is right now. Maybe I'm
> wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that the original printers TeX was
> targetted at were dominated by dot matrix printers.
Err, sort of. TeX was intended for dot matrix printers really for draft
purposes, anything final was to go out on phototypesetters (God awful
monstrosities that they were).
If your printer is 9-pin, then the output is just plain going to suck unless
you use the printers internal fonts (which are optimised for the print
head). What you could do is generate a PDF, and then use pdftotext from the
xpdf package to create a text-only monospace version of the document that
your printer can use it's own fonts for. Doing that will shred equations
and destroy figures, but the text will be relatively un-mutilated. I know
some printers (on either the front panel or in the driver) you can adjust
the number of passes the printer will make so you can set it to do a sort
of double resolution by making one pass, shifting 1/2 pin's width down the
page, and making a second pass.
You might also consdier getting a new printer. If you go to the Central
Stores surplus sales ( http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infostor/index1.html )
you can possibly pick up a working laser printer (working being the hard
part) for a very, very cheap price. If you do this, you can get bottles of
powdered toner from Staples/OfficeDepot that you can use to refill the
print cartridge. Of course, the print quality is rather low (I do this and
get a nice grey fuzz depending on the conditions and a recurring ink
splotch), it's better than a dot matrix.
DG
Ben Korvemaker
settting was the cause of the illegiblity. I now have many levels of
print quality, and the ones of form Nx180 appear to be the right height.
60x180 is pretty bad, but fast. 360x180 is dreadfully slow because it
takes two passes for each line, but it's a reasonable approximation.
On 2004-03-05, Andre Masella <apma...@engmail.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> No, but in terms of print quality, you can't guarantee anything anymore. For
> instace, LaTeX has 4 different horizontal marks: a hyphen use join words, a
> minus sign used in math mode, an en dash and an em dash used for
> interruptions and sentence splices. Can your printer font handle that?
> Probably not. TeX's rendering system has the precision to place elements on
> a page < 1/2 wavelength of visible light and you want it to use your cheap
> printer fonts? Bah. :-)
Perhaps it can't do it all, but for the characters it can do it'd speed
things up. And "draft" mode would be legible. I also doubt you can fully
identify all four dashes on my printer. Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect
at least one of them looks like the other three. 24 pins only have so
much detail.
> Err, sort of. TeX was intended for dot matrix printers really for draft
> purposes, anything final was to go out on phototypesetters (God awful
> monstrosities that they were).
Ok. Thanks for clearing up my misconception.
> If your printer is 9-pin, then the output is just plain going to suck unless
> you use the printers internal fonts (which are optimised for the print
> head). What you could do is generate a PDF, and then use pdftotext from the
> xpdf package to create a text-only monospace version of the document that
> your printer can use it's own fonts for. Doing that will shred equations
> and destroy figures, but the text will be relatively un-mutilated. I know
> some printers (on either the front panel or in the driver) you can adjust
> the number of passes the printer will make so you can set it to do a sort
> of double resolution by making one pass, shifting 1/2 pin's width down the
> page, and making a second pass.
Oh yes, there are many, many hacks I can do. catting the latex source to
/dev/lp0 works too. :) The best one I've found was to write a text file,
and then select the nice font settings on the front panel. If I find
the manual again, I could even embed the escape codes in it, and get
something that looks quite decent. But I'd much rather latex do that for
me. tetex knows about a number of printers, including the IBM ProPrinter
which my printer can supposedly handle.
> You might also consdier getting a new printer. If you go to the Central
> Stores surplus sales ( http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infostor/index1.html )
> you can possibly pick up a working laser printer (working being the hard
> part) for a very, very cheap price. If you do this, you can get bottles of
> powdered toner from Staples/OfficeDepot that you can use to refill the
> print cartridge. Of course, the print quality is rather low (I do this and
> get a nice grey fuzz depending on the conditions and a recurring ink
> splotch), it's better than a dot matrix.
I could. But I've got a very decent printer (a tad slow, but decent).
I used the 9-pin version of it for years and was happy, other than
the night I woke up to it spewing pages and pages of garbage (a power
flicker?). And now that I've at least got it printing in decent quality,
I'll live with it. It just bugs me that I see this "ibmpp" as an option
in texconfig, but there's no obvious way to kick out something more
suitable for the printer.
Ben Korvemaker
> KX-P1123! That's the same as my old printer. That thing was awesome.
The best part is that it was a castoff (mmm.. free), and not used very
heavily. It could probably pass for new, so I expect it will outlive me.
DG
Ben Korvemaker wrote:
> On 2004-03-05, DG <david.gra...@telus.net> wrote:
>
>>KX-P1123! That's the same as my old printer. That thing was awesome.
>
>
> The best part is that it was a castoff (mmm.. free), and not used very
> heavily. It could probably pass for new, so I expect it will outlive me.
>
I wish I hadn't given mine away. I think I could have used it nowadays.
I never use my parallel port for anything, and it would be nice to
print stuff like man pages on it.
--DG
BIG JOE :)
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