DVI Driver for 24-pin

[Paul de Bra]

In article <1953 at naucse.UUCP> jdc at naucse.UUCP (John Campbell) writes:
>From article <4382 at cvl.umd.edu>, by liuqing at cvl.umd.edu (Larry Liuqing Huang):
>In fact, I'd like to have a larger discussion by anyone willing
>to explain some things.  I too have a 24-pin printer--actually a
>NEC P5200 and I wonder about what font files I should try to use
>even if I ever find or build a dvi driver.  The dots on this printer
>are 360 dpi, but the pins are .2mm circles which gives about 20%
>overlap last time I did the calculations.
>
>Do I want 240 dpi fonts?  300 or even 360?  Do I even want to be in
>the highest resolution mode or do I want to drop back to 180 dpi and
>use 180 dpi fonts?  

You want 360dpi fonts of course. The thickness of the dots can be
(partially) compensated by metafont. Here is a modedef I used:

mode_def nec =
 proofing:=0;                   % no, we're not making proofs
 fontmaking:=1;                 % yes, we are making a font
 tracingtitles:=0;              % no, don't show titles at all
 pixels_per_inch:=360;          % that's the meaning of lowres
 blacker:=-0.2;                  % make pens a bit less black
 fillin:=0;                    % compensate for diagonal fillin
 o_correction:=0;              % but don't overshoot as much
enddef;

Metafont does run into a few problems when you specify a negative blacker
value, just like when the resolution is a bit too low. In any case, I am a
very happy Tex and Nec user. If you want a copy of my dvi2nec driver,
please drop me a note. Given a few requests I will send the driver by e-mail,
but given many requests I will simply make it available for anonymous ftp.

Paul.
(debra at research.att.com)