From: CSBVAX::CSBVAX::MRGATE::"SMTP::CRVAX.SRI.COM::RELAY-INFO-VAX" 6-FEB-1989 11:09 To: MRGATE::"ARISIA::EVERHART" Subj: 1st word on Output Devices and conversions Received: From KL.SRI.COM by CRVAX.SRI.COM with TCP; Mon, 6 FEB 89 07:30:27 PDT Received: from ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU by KL.SRI.COM with TCP; Mon, 6 Feb 89 07:17:21 PST Received: by ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (5.61/1.33) id AA13528; Mon, 6 Feb 89 07:17:49 -0800 Received: from USENET by ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU with netnews for info-vax@kl.sri.com (info-vax@kl.sri.com) (contact usenet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU if you have questions) Date: 5 Feb 89 20:57:23 GMT From: dogie!edwards@speedy.cs.wisc.edu ( Mark Edwards) Organization: UW-Madison Academic Computer Center Subject: 1st word on Output Devices and conversions Message-Id: <1181@dogie.edu> Sender: info-vax-request@kl.sri.com To: info-vax@kl.sri.com (I know I have sent this to multiple groups. The purpose is for the widest possbile exposure. ) Many times I have read articles from various people on the Usenet requesting information on availability of different computer related things/information (for example programs, specificatons, printer fonts, etc.). I too have asked for such things. A while back I asked comp.os.vms for an example of a print symbiont for VMS, and more recently I asked the same group how they hooked up PostScript printers to their Vaxes. Unfortunately for me there was no response to either inquiry. However just last week I inferred the existance of such a program from an article posted to that group. I ftped it, compiled and linked it, and am quite satisfied with it. I estimate that program saved me many tens of hours of work and frustrations (VMS system services and utilities are loads of fun). The following is a start of something that I think will be generally useful to many people. Its mostly about output devices and conversions. I have started a small glossary of related terms also. I can envision lots of directions this might go off in. And as of yet haven't ruled anything out. At the moment it is only sketchy at best and I am inviting comments, suggestions, addition, general format changes, flames, or anything at all to help improve the list. Thank you mark Internet: edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu Bitnet: edwards@wiscmacc UUCP: {}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!edwards ==================== Cut Here ================================================ The Last Word on Output and Conversions 4 Feb 1989 0. Commentary This whole thing started while I was investigating how to use TeX with an Apple Laserwriter. Using the TugBoat Journal (?) I found that Nelson Beebe had a driver for the Apple Laserwriter for VMS. I ftp'ed it and was quite happy to get "postscript" output from my dvi file. As far as I know this driver uses Computer Modern fonts only. I didn't particularily care for the output and it creates large files that contain fonts to download to the laserwriter. I asked comp.text for a driver that used postscript fonts and soon was ftping around the country for various drivers. The first one I found that seemed to be what I want was "psdvi" which I got from june.cs.washington.edu It included the postscript tfm fonts also. I converted the program to run under VMS and got some output. Looked great. But.... I then found out that it chokes on mathmetics. This just wouldn't do. A driver I found at uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (dvi2ps) seems to allow usage of both the postscript fonts and the cm fonts for math and seems to be the best candidate to convert to VMS. (It sure would solve many problems if I were just using a Unix machine. Oh well.) During this process I picked up lots of other information and decided to write it down before it got filed in some forgotten place. 1. Introduction The sum total of all the computer know how available on the net through netnews or stored in ftpable archives (or other archives) is mindboggling. However there are many great hurdles in sorting out all the information available. One of the biggest obstacles is just gathering the relevant information, whether it be in netnews or in some archive some where. The task of discovering where some of the ftp archives sites are was made slightly easier last December upon the posting of an article that listed the various sites across the country and what kinds of programs the archive excels in (by Edwards Vielmetti emv@starbarlounge.cc.umich.edu). This is my attempt at compiling information about output devices and such things. What I mean by output devices are display terminals, laser printers, and typesetters. The kinds of information that you will find here is about typesetting, fonts, converting some type of font to another, converting device independent files to device dependent files, converting various ways of storing pictures to postscript and so. I have also started a small glossary of important or useful terms to help aide in understanding. I orignally posted parts of this list in comp.fonts and comp.text. But it has grown and includes information that pertains to other groups now. Please send all correspondence to me and I will post a new updated list every once in a while. (If enough interest develops I may even offer various formated versions.) Thank you mark Mark Edwards Systems Programmer University of Wisconsin -MACC 1210 W. Dayton St Madison, Wisconsin 53706 Internet: edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu Bitnet: edwards@wiscmacc UUCP: {}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!edwards 1.0 Text Processing 1.1 List of formating and/or typesetting program Program Operating System(s) ------------------------------------------------------------ TeX Most operating systems troff (ditroff) Unix based Scribe ??? Runoff VMS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20 (or DSR (DEC Standard Runoff)) WordPerfect 5.0 PC, Macintosh, VMS MS-Word 4.0 PC, Macintosh Ventura Publisher PC, Macintosh Aldus Pagemaker PC, Macintosh 1.2 Programs to translate from one text processing language to another Both of these programs claim a 90% translate rate. s2latex Scribe to Latex tr2tex troff to Latex 1.3 Programs that can generate dvi files TeX Ditroff 1.4 Programs to translate the TeX dvi files into device dependant files dvi2ps dvi to postscript (Uses CM fonts for math) (Unix) (many versions. Most recent at a.cs.uiuc.edu ??) dvialw dvi to PostScript (Uses CM fonts only, no postscript) dvibit dvi to Version 3.10 BBN BitGraph terminal dvican dvi to Canon LBP-8 A2 laser printer dvigd dvi to Golden Dawn Golden Laser 100 printer dviimp dvi to Imagen imPRESS-language laser printer family dvijep dvi to Hewlett-Packard Laser Jet Plus dvijet dvi to Hewlett-Packard Laser Jet dvil3p dvi to DEC LN03 Plus laser printer dvil75 dvi to DEC LA75 144 dpi printer dvim72 dvi to Apple Imagewriter 72 dpi printer dvimac dvi to Apple Imagewriter 144 dpi printer dvimpi dvi to MPI Sprinter 72 dpi printer dvio72 dvi to OKIDATA Pacemark 2410 72 dpi printer dvioki dvi to OKIDATA Pacemark 2410 144 dpi printer dviprx dvi to Printronix 60h x 72v dpi printer dviqms dvi to quic (QMS 800/1200 laser printer language) (VMS) dvitos dvi to Toshiba P-1351 180 dpi printer psdvi dvi to postscript (No math typesetting) (Unix, VMS) settex dvi to compugraphics 8600 (VMS) 1.5 Programs to translate troff output file into device dependant files troff2lj troff output to HP laserjet (Unix) 2. Font Information 2.1 List of currently known fonts Font Description ------------------------------------------------------------ bdf - binary distribution format (Adobe Systems and X11) fon - raster and stroke fonts (MS-Windows) gf - generic font (TeX) hershey - stroke (vector) fonts onx - ??? (X10. Still supported by some vendors) pk - packed (TeX) pxl - pixel (TeX) rst - raster (Downloaded to some Imagen printers) snf - server natural format (X11) Postscript - Adobe Systems vfont - Versatec font (used by SunView and Berkeley (BSD 4.x)) HP LaserJet ?? Macintosh ?? 2.2 More indepth description of font 2.2.1 Hershey Fonts: (excerpted from distribution found at ????) - are a set of more than 2000 glyph (symbol) descriptions in vector ( point-to-point ) format - can be grouped as almost 20 'occidental' (english, greek, cyrillic) fonts, 3 or more 'oriental' (Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) fonts, and a few hundred miscellaneous symbols (mathematical, musical, cartographic, etc etc) - are suitable for typographic quality output on a vector device (such as a plotter) when used at an appropriate scale. - were digitized by Dr. A. V. Hershey while working for the U.S. Government National Bureau of Standards (NBS). 2.2.2 vfont Font formats for the Benson-Varian or Versatec. Bitmapped. Found on BSD and Sun Unix systems. 2.3 Font Metrics 2.3.1 List of types of Font Metrics Font Metric Description ------------------------------------------------------------- afm - Adobe Font Metric pl - property list (human readable format) psfm - Postscript Font Metric tfm - TeX Font Metric 2.3.2 List of programs to generate Font Metric information Program Font Metric Description -------------------------------------------------------------- MetaFont tfm (TeX) (also generates gf font files) afmtopl afm to property list pltotfm Property list to tfm tftopl tfm to property list 2.3.3 List of programs to convert one type of font to another Program Description ---------------------------------------------------------------- bdf2gf bdf to gf bdf2vf bdf to vfont bdftosnf bdf to snf (X-window Utility) gftopk gf to pk gftopxl gf to pxl her2vfont hershey to vfont mac2bdf Macintosh font to bdf pktogf pk to gf pktopx pk to pxl pxtopk pxl to pk vf2bdf vfont to bdf 2.3.4 Notes Note: ( From: "ken@cs.rochester.edu" "Ken Yap" 27-JAN-1989 18:56) Keep in mind that font metrics are not completely divorced from the font bitmaps or outlines. The metrics describe the ideal, scalable dimensions, while the bitmap files have the actual pixel widths. Metrics files are used to describe families of fonts such as TeX and PostScript fonts. Fonts for screens generally only have pixel widths. 3.0 PostScript 3.1 Programs to convert to postscript Program and Brief Discription cif2ps CIF to postscript (Unix) ccps Calcomp Standard plots to postscript (calcomp2ps) (Unix) ditroff-to-ps ditroff output to postscript (Unix) dvi2ps dvi (TeX) file to postscript (Uses CM fonts for math) (Unix) giftops GIF format files to postscript psdvi dvi (TeX) to postscript (No math typesetting) (Unix, VMS) sun2ps Sun raster file to postscript (SUN) sxlps convert SIXEL graphics format to PostScript (VMS) tek2ps tektronix (4014) style plots to postscript tif2ps tiff to postscript (Unix, MS-Dos (MSC5.0)) zeta2ps translate Nicolet Zeta plots into PostScript (VMS, Unix) 3.2 Postscript previewing Postscript can be previewed on the Sun, and the NeXT computers. There is also a program avaibable that allows previewing on PC's with ega cards. ghostscript postscript interpreter for PC's with EGA cards 3.3 Postscript printer drivers/symbionts laser.c print symbiont for VMS, available from texas 4. Where to get these programs Unfortunately or not some of the programs come bundled with other software or the name of the archive is different. Next time I'll try to figure out some way to include this information also. a.cs.uiuc.edu TeX sources (dvi2ps) ... science.utah.edu TeX sources, most of the dvi drivers simtel20.arpa pd2:, various TeX, Postscript sources sun.soe.clarkson.edu fonts for X11, TeX sources utadnx.cc.utexas.edu VMS sources (zetaps, laser, sxlps) uunet.uu.net TeX sources, most of the postscript sources Appendix A Glossary of Terms The words in this glossary should be related to output devices. I can forsee the need to include the various names of windowing packages and what form of objects they display. For example NeWS is window system that displays a version of postscript on Sun Workstations, but not necessarily compatible with NeXTstep which uses Display Postscript from Adobe. Term Brief definition/description bitmap font uses pattern of pixels for each character. With raster fonts there exists a different set of pixels for each character in every fonts size you want. Sometimes called raster Display Postscript EPS encapsulated postscript font One complete set of characters in the same typeface and size. gif The following is an excerpt from the GIF image format specification: SCREEN DESCRIPTOR The Screen Descriptor describes the overall parameters for all GIF images following. It defines the overall dimensions of the image space or logical screen required, the existence of color mapping information, background screen color, and color depth information. This information is stored in a series of 8-bit bytes as described below. bits 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Byte # +---------------+ | | 1 +-Screen Width -+ Raster width in pixels (LSB first) | | 2 +---------------+ | | 3 +-Screen Height-+ Raster height in pixels (LSB first) | | 4 +-+-----+-+-----+ M = 1, Global color map follows Descriptor |M| cr |0|pixel| 5 cr+1 = # bits of color resolution +-+-----+-+-----+ pixel+1 = # bits/pixel in image | background | 6 background=Color index of screen background +---------------+ (color is defined from the Global color |0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0| 7 map or default map if none specified) +---------------+ glyph a symbol that conveys information nonverbally. (Websters) graphic font See vector font. pixel the individual elements or dots of the digitized image. raster font See bitmap font. ReGIS Remote Graphics Instruction Set. ReGIS is designed for simple synthetic graphics; it has primitives for drawing lines and curves, as well as its own set of characters. rtf rich transfer format(??). MS-Word only (??). sixel The sixel protocol is mainly a way to encode a bitmap using "printable" characters. Essentially, you take a vertical slice of 6 rows of the image, turn the resulting 6 bits on their side, then shift them over into the printable range. Repeat until you've finished all the columns; then move down by 6 rows and repeat. (The reason for this vertical slicing, rather than the easier-to-handle horizontal slicing, is that the sixel encoding was originally designed for simple, memoryless dot-matrix printers, which need to print the data as they receive it.) There are some additional codes to specify things like the resolution the creator of the file used. Color images are presented by sending over a couple of bitmaps, one per color. (From: Jerry Leichter LEICHTER@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU) serif any of the short lines steemming from and at an angle to the upper and lower ends of the strokes of a letter. (Examples: Times, Courier) sanserif not serif. (Examples: Helvitica,) stroke a mark or dash made by a single movement. One of the lines of a letter of the alphabet. (websters) stroke font see vector font. tiff tagged image file format vector font define lines that make up characters. Only need one set of characters for each font. They can be drawn at other sizes by varying the length of the lines. Vector fonts can be easily rotated and scaled. Sometimes called graphic fonts, or stroke font. WYSIWYG What you see is what you get. In typesetting it usually refers to a particular word processing feature that displays things on screen as if they were typeset or printed. TeX is not WYSIWYG while MS-Word is. -- edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706