Commands Reference, Volume 3

ibm3812 Command

Purpose

Postprocesses the troff command output for the IBM 3812 Model 2 Pageprinter.

Syntax

ibm3812 [ -altpaper] [ -landscape] [ -quietly] [ -FDirectory] [ -i] [File...]

Description

The ibm3812 command is a postprocessor that can be used on intermediate output produced by the troff command.

Note: An entire page is placed in memory before it is printed.

If given one or more file names as options, the ibm3812 command processes those files. If no file names are specified, this command acts as a filter interpreting standard input.

The ibm3812 command's font files allow the postprocessor to send characters of more than one byte to the printer. These can be characters that require multiple bytes to represent them, such as code page and point; or, they can be characters that are composed of two or more concatenated glyphs.

For example, the character code for the \(ib (improper subset) special character is:

"\001\125\xe2\xff\xe8\xe3%\x00\x16\001\074\xe3\xff\xea"

The printer is in Page Map Primitive (PMP) mode when these bytes are sent, so you must use the 001 directive to introduce a character. For single-byte codes, this Generic Font Patterns command is automatically handled by the postprocessor. The % (percent sign) characters escape the bytes containing 0, which would otherwise terminate the code sequence. To obtain a literal % character, escape it with another % character so that a percent sign is displayed as %%. A single-byte % code is assumed to be a literal percent sign, so that the single-byte % character needs no special handling in the font file.

Notes:

The ibm3812 command depends on the files with names ending in .out in the /usr/lib/font/devibm3812 directory. It does not produce usable output unless these files have been properly set up.
The postprocessor requires additional font information to be stored in the /usr/lib/font/devibm3812/fonts file. If new fonts are added to this file, make sure that the DESC file is also updated to reflect the additional fonts and special characters.

The format of the file must be preserved. The file contains the following four fields:

The one- or two-letter name of the font
The full name of the font on the printer-font diskette
The one- or two-letter name of the substitute font
An array of five available sizes.

Flags

-altpaper	Specifies that the file should be printed from the alternate paper drawer. By default, the ibm3812 command prints from the primary paper drawer.
-landscape	Specifies that the file should be printed in landscape orientation, so that the wider part of the paper is horizontally oriented. This flag rotates the page to the right by 90 degrees. By default, the ibm3812 command prints in portrait orientation.
-quietly	Suppresses all non-fatal error messages.
-FDirectory	Specifies the directory holding the font files. The default file is devibm3812. The command looks for font files in the /usr/lib/font directory by default.
-i	Suppresses initialization of the printer that runs the PMP.init macro, after the job has printed.

Example

Following is an example of the troff command used with the ibm3812 command:

troff file|ibm3812|qprt-dp

Files

*/usr/lib/font/devibm3812/.out**	Contains font files for the ibm3812 command.
/usr/lib/font/devibm3812/fonts	Contains information about the available fonts for the ibm3812 command.

Related Information

The ibm3816 command, troff command.

The troff font file format specifies description files for the troff command.