🚀 go-pugleaf

pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>In order to have the best results for type of printer one must produce
>different DVI files; it is no good to have a DVI file that was built
>assuming the printer had CM fonts with their widths and trying to
>print in Apalatino (TM) on a PostScript device. You *can* do it in the
>DVU postprocessor, but the output will be ugly, as it will have to print
>Palatino characters at positions determined by CM widths.
>
>What we need for efficient printing of TeX(info) output on fixed pitch
>printer is a set of font descriptions that specify constant width fonts
>throughout and glue that stretches only by fixed increments for
>interword and interline spacing. Dvidoc seems a start in this direction;
>does anybody know of any more advanced technology?

Dvidoc requires you to input a special macro file that sets up the various
fonts and dimensions to be suitable for fixed-width output.  So effectively
it does produce a different DVI file.  Unfortunately, the commonly
distributed version does not do the settings very well (e.g., the line
spacing is not the same as the font height).  It's possible to get over
these problems with a bit of work.  For something like manual pages which
use a canned format and (hopefully) little direct invocation of TeX
primitives it is quite easy to produce perfect output with dvidoc.  I have
done this on a project involving a substantial number of manual entries.

One problem is that there isn't anyone working on dvidoc at the moment who
might incorporate improvements like this.  If anyone wants to volunteer I
can send them the work I have done.  It's more than a year since I was
involved with it so I have forgotten all the details.

,
Eamonn