🚀 go-pugleaf

I just purchased an HP Deskjet 500 and would like to use it to output DVI
files (built either by TeX or by FSF's groff) from my home system (a 386
box with Interactive Unix 2.2).  I first tried drivers which produce pure
graphics, intended for old HP Laserjet, and they do work, but (even with
the patches from the net to Beebe's 2.10, allowing use of compression
mode) they build very large files (e.g. 4.5 to 9 megabytes from the 40
or so pages in the 72Kbyte readline.dvi in the GNU readline distribution),
and are accordingly VERY slow to print.

Now the DJ500 is supposed to be able to use "soft fonts", i.e. download
fonts just as the LJ plus, LJ-II, etc, but only if you purchase a RAM
expansion cartridge.  So I bought a 256Kbyte RAM cartridge and installed
it, but still font downloading does not seem to work.  I've tried both
Beebe's drivers, as well as the one in C++ from comp.sources.whatever,
and in both cases, the font downloading seems to fail, despite the RAM
cartridge being installed, and the DJ500 simply prints courier letters
(in the positions where the letters from the downloaded fonts should go).
I don't have a DJ500 technical reference manual, yet, so I'm unable to
debug what's happening, but, judging from the brief summary of escape
sequences in the owner's manual and a LJ-II tech ref, it may be that
some escape sequences having to do with soft-fonts, which the LJ-II likes
and the drivers produce, are NOT liked by the DJ500, so the *whole* font
downloading process fails???  In other words, it seems that the PC that
the DJ500 groks may be a subset of what's needed to use these drivers,
but I can't really judge yet.  Anybody have a clue?  Or a driver, or
patches to one, to allow me to make use of my dearly-purchased soft-font
RAM (1/4 of the purchase price of the whole printer, oh my my...!)?

Any hints will be dearly appreciated!  If I get info by mail I will
of course summarize to the groups if requested.
-- 
Alex Martelli - CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Ronzani 7/29, Bologna, Italia
(work:) martelli@cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex@am.sublink.org
voice phone: (work:) +39 (51) 6130360, (home:) +39 (51) 250434; 
fax: +39 (51) 6130294 (work only), Fidonet: 332/407.314 (home only).