Version 0.8 of the DVI to HP PCL printer driver 'dvi2pcl' is now available for anonymous ftp from Name: hybrid.irfu.se Address: 130.238.30.23 This release fixes a bug wich showed up for largish jobs (> 50 pages) with many soft fonts downloaded so that, in addition, graphics raster fonts were being used. If a pcl string was read via \special and that string changed the printer resolution, the graphics raster glyphs were printed with the latter, incorrect resolution. Binary downloading of font and char descriptors is now done explicitly value by value in order to avoid any struct alignment problems. This should improve portability to different architectures and may solve the problems reported by some users running SGI and PC/386 with non-gcc compilers. Note that the '-o' option has changed. The file extent '.pcl' is no longer attached to the output bitfile name. This is to simplify printing to the bit bucket ('-o /dev/null') for testing purposes. Also, since 'dvi2plc' can write directly to standard output, there is usually no need to save the bitfile but rather one should pipe the output directly to the printer spooler ('dvi2pcl .dvi | lp -or -d'). Version 0.8 adds support for color text for PaintJet printers via the command: \special{pjxl:} where is either 'black', 'red', 'green', 'yellow', 'blue', 'magenta', 'cyan', or 'white'. With the new 'pjxl.sty' style file, text color may be changed by using shorthand commands: '\black', '\red', '\green', etc. For PaintJet printers, 'dvi2pcl' only works acceptably with downloaded soft fonts (not raster graphics ones) so printing on the PaintJet, which cannot handle soft font downloading, or on the PaintJet XL with raster fonts, does not work yet. The number of fonts downloaded to the PaintJet XL must not exceed 28 (= the hardware limit). Ordinary raster graphics pictures are printed OK. Rules are not printed on PaintJet XL since the PJXL has no hardware support for this. Version 0.8 adds rudimentary support for device selection via the '-d' option ('-j' obsoleted, for compatibility with the 'lp' spooler). Printers supported via '-d' are: "lj+" (HP LaserJet+), "lj2" (HP LaserJet II), "lj2d" (HP LaserJet IID),"lj2p" (HP LaserJet IIP),"lj3si" (HP LaserJet IIISi), "lj3p" (HP LaserJet IIIP),"pj" (HP PaintJet), and "pjxl" (HP PaintJet XL). In fact, only "lj+" has any effect. This flag overcomes certain hardware limitations (missing transparency mode) in the LaserJet+. It is the user's responsibility to add the '-f ' flag to limit the number of soft fonts for the particular printer used. The man page has been updated to reflect changes and corrections ('-d', '-o', '-r', and '-R' options; '\special' command 'pjxl:') This release is the last alpha release. The next release, v0.9 will be the first beta release and will have the (now quite ugly) code cleaned up and shortened considerably. New functionality (support for PostScript graphics in PCL via ghostscript, virtual fonts, and permanent font downloading for faster printing) is planned for v0.9. Please report successes and problems for your specific hardware/compiler combination. Uppsala 23 Nov 1992 --- ^ Bo Thide'-------------------------------------------------------------- |I| Swedish Institute of Space Physics, S-755 91 Uppsala, Sweden |R| Phone: (+46) 18-303671. Fax: (+46) 18-403100. IP: 130.238.30.23 /|F|\ INTERNET: bt@irfu.se UUCP: ...!mcvax!sunic!irfu!bt ~~U~~ ----------------------------------------------------------------sm5dfw-