print filter

[Barry Gold]

The Fortune Systems 32:16 has a really neat way of handling printers.  There is
a printcap file, analogous to termcap, which is used by the lp daemon.
This makes it easy to adapt a wide variety of printers for use with their
system.  (A good idea with a supermicro that's likely to be used with anything
from decwriters to expensive NEC and Diablo printers or even multi-font, high-
resolution dot matrix printers.)

Unfortunately, only their word processing software (Fortune:Word) actually
makes use of printcap.  I haven't found any way to make other things (like
nroff) make use of it.  I've been considering an nroff-output to Fortune:Word
filter for some time.  Also nroff input (mm/ms) to/from F:W.

Real soon now...

Meanwhile it would be nice if Fortune Systems made the various parts of their
system work together.  I've got this *really nice* home computer that's
rapidly becoming obsolete as things like the PC/AT come out with more advanced
unix systems.

barry gold
lcc.barry at ucla-cs
ucbvax!ucla-cs!lcc!barry