nroff and Proportional Printing on an FX-80

[Goeke at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA]

          Just before I was about to start writing my own code for
handling simple text going to my FX-80 in proportional mode, I looked
one last time at 'nroff' to see if it couldn't be fudged to do the job.
(An aside:  I'm running VENIX/11 and I don't have the source for
'nroff', only a brief description of the -T tables which clearly
indicate one can't possibly do this.)  Lo and behold!  With a couple of
hours of effort I got the old FX humming along, properly putting in 1/6
em spaces to fill out lines, and adding features like commandable
narrow-space (NOT available in 'nroff' -- unless you modify the supplied
table, that is).

          My problem is the FX-80.  The only way I found to get it to
move "a little bit" to fudge in the fractional spaces was to go into the
dot graphics mode.  My, what a dance it does when that command comes in
the middle of a text line!  The printer's effective speed goes down to a
point which reminds me of overnight batch processing.  Has anyone else
faced -- and solved -- this problem?  Should I be asking some other
list?

          BTW, if there is any interest in the matter, I'll gladly share
the secrets of the -T table with anyone interested in proportional
stuff.  (But then, I'm probably just the last to know.)

Bob Goeke --> Goeke -at MIT-Multics MIT Center for Space Research
617-253-1910