1 ------------------------
3 ------------------------
5 1: Added UTF support for Plan 9. Only signigficant source code changes were
6 in dpost.utf (font.h, font.c, dpost.c). Added common/rune.[hc] so code
7 can be compiled elsewere. Remove RUNELIB in commmon/rune.h if fullrune(),
8 chartorune(), and runetochar() are available on your system. Original
9 DWB 3.3 dpost source is in directory dpost. You should select dpost or
10 dpost.utf in postscript.mk. Both compile and install a program called
11 dpost so don't pick both!
13 2: dpost can read old or UTF troff output. Default is whatever is assigned
14 to READING (file common/gen.h). You get one or the other, unless troff
15 tells dpost what encoding to use (currently x E UTF).
17 3: Most other translators passed bytes through and so only needed slightly
18 modified proglogues and a new encoding scheme (psencoding/UTF.enc). It
19 works for Latin1, but still needs a bit more attention. Prologue changes
20 were easy and only involved adding lines like,
23 /stringwidth {stringwidth} bind def
25 Guarantees text procedures used in prologues aren't operators and can be
26 successfully redefined in UTF.enc. Unbinding means a small but probably
27 not noticeable speed penalty. You may not want to include those changes
30 4: Operator redefinitions means dpost should work in it's own dictionary
31 (rather than userdict). Not implemented yet, but should be easy. Only
32 potential problem is with picture inclusion when dpost reads UTF.enc.
34 ------------------------
36 ------------------------
38 1: postio now outputs all unrecognized status reports - primarly for spooler
41 2: The makefiles also enable the selection of alternate stream module names
42 for streams based DKHOST support in postio.
44 3: dpost now assumes the optional fifth token in a font mounting command
45 (e.g. x font 2 R /usr/me/font/R) is the full pathname of the font. troff
46 outputs the pathname when a .fp request contains a third argument that
47 begins with a / as in .fp 1 R /usr/me/font/R.
49 4: By request Latin1's - character has been changed from minus to the smaller
50 hyphen character. Added \(dq and \(bs (for " and \ characters) to devpost
51 and devLatin1 tables. Also added \(!! and \(?? to devpost tables.
53 5: Helvetica-Light and Helvetica-LightOblique tables are included as HL and
54 HK in devpost and devLatin1, even though fonts aren't generally available.
55 Also copy H to HM during an install of devpost and devLatin1 tables.
57 6: LH is a horizontally arranged color Lucent logo with text which replaces the AT&T logo.
58 LV is a vertically arranged monochrome AT&T logo with text.
59 FA is a horizontally arranged monochrome Lucent logo with text (low res.).
60 L1 is a monochrome AT&T logo, no text.
61 LA is a monochrome AT&T text.
63 7: Included L1 and LA outlines in devpost and devLatin1. Adjusted LA scaling
64 so size of "AT&T" matches what's in LV. Original PostScript came
65 from Matthijs Melchior.
67 8: Included the "symmetric clippath" version of roundpage.ps as Nroundpage.ps
68 in directory postscript/psfiles. Move it to roundpage.ps if you want it to
71 9: Added a few lines of code to dpost for handling current implementation of
72 the portrait/landscape mode macros.
74 10: The man page for download now documents the -r option and notes that -p
77 ------------------------
79 ------------------------
81 1: buildtables stuff has been cleaned up and is now a user level command.
82 Uses shell.lib files that are installed with font tables. The devpost
83 tables were built on a version 47.0 PS-810. The devLatin1 tables were
84 built on a version 51.7 PS-820.
86 2: The devLatin1 tables provide support for the ISO Latin1 alphabet on
89 3: All translators support different text font encoding schemes using the
90 -E option and *.enc files installed in POSTLIB. The ISO Latin 1 alphabet
91 is supported with file /usr/lib/postscript/Latin1.enc.
93 4: printfont prints a table of the available (encoded) characters in one
94 or more PostScript fonts. It also understands the -E option.
96 5: grabit and hardcopy are two new programs that may be of interest to the
97 more serious PostScript programmer. grabit resembles ==, but produces
98 output that's usally easier to read. hardcopy redirects output from
99 PostScript file output operators (or procedures) to paper. It's useful
100 if you don't have direct access to a printer.
102 6: Prologues and programs are stored together. Other common PostScript files
103 are now in the psfiles directory.
105 ------------------------
107 ------------------------
109 1: The package is now included in DWB. Version numbers are a bit misleading.
110 The one in postscript.mk refers to the DWB package.
112 2: dpost (and troff) now read ASCII font tables. makedev and the old binary
115 3: The devpost directory came directly from the DWB package. The font tables
116 originally distributed with this package are in directory devopost. They
117 are not installed. If possible we recommend you use the devpost tables.
118 The old tables can be installed by adding devopost to the TARGETS list in
121 4: dpost recognizes two new fields in font tables. Entries for the full
122 PostScript font look like,
126 The fontname field is helps manage host resident fonts, the DocumentFonts
127 comment, and is used to define font name abbreviations like the ones in
128 dpost.ps. A font table entry that looks like,
132 disables the runtime abbreviation for the font - dpost assumes it's already
135 5: Extra font tables included in DWB 3.0's devpost font collection are in
136 directory devpost.add. They included here, but should probably not be
139 6: Bracket building has been fixed and tested on a wide range of PostScript
140 printers. It will likely still not work on many clones. Real problem
141 appears to be with Adobe's braceleftbt character.
143 7: Most of the special tuning code for device emulation has been removed.
144 Emulation still works, but there may be cases where it's not as good as
147 8: Several problems with color and reverse video printing have been fixed.
149 9: buildtables directory has been cleanup up. The template files in directory
150 buildtables/devpost.data were used to build the devpost tables.
152 10: postplot and download are two new programs. postplot is for the System V
153 plot package only. Both were written for the Unix 4.0 lp package.
155 11: postgif is also relatively new - it came from Chi Choy.
157 12: The translators now rotate clockwise when printing in landscape mode. If
158 you want the old behavior set ROTATION to -1 in postscript.mk.
160 13: forms.ps has been cleaned up some. Better behavior when you print 2
161 landscape pages on one sheet.
163 14: Handling of Datakit code for System V has been changed some. Makefiles
164 now expect to find libdk.a and dk.h in standard places (e.g /usr/lib and
165 /usr/include). Set DKHOST to TRUE in postscript.mk to get Datakit support
168 If you're stuck and need to have things behave as they did in the past
169 take a look at file postio/postio.mk. Define DKHOSTDIR and uncomment
170 three lines and the behavior should be close to what it was.
172 15: Picture inclusion and color macros are gone. They're included in the DWB
173 package, and not here.
175 ------------------------
177 ------------------------
179 1: Implemented height and slant requests in dpost.
181 2: Modified the behavior of all translators so save objects are no longer left
182 on the stack. The original implementation was a mistake and occasionally
183 (e.g. picture inclusion with forms.ps) resulted in invalid restores.
185 3: Fixed the mistake in the external declaration of mesg in postio/slowsend.c.
187 4: The malloc() call in postdmd (routine dimensions()) is only made if patterns
190 5: Changed definition of De in draw.ps so savematrix is loaded with the CTM
191 whenever De is executed. Original implementation didn't work with forms.ps
192 because the CTM is changed with each page image. (4/29/89)
194 6: Flush stdout when postio is invoked with the -t option - just convenient
195 not necessary. (4/30/89)
197 7: Included a man page for the picture inclusion macros - file man/mpictures.5.
200 8: Added BoundingBox code to dpost - still needs to go in other translators.
201 Most of the work is done in common/bbox.c. (5/7/89)
203 9: Fiddled with the bracket building stuff in dpost.ps so things finally look
204 decent. Was particularly bad on the typesetter.
206 10: dpost now generates a PageBoundingBox comment and ps_include.c accepts
207 the comment. Added -B option to enable/disable the BoundingBox calculations.
208 -Bon to enable and -Boff to disable. On by default now, but that may change.
209 Add similar code to the rest of the translators (6/20/89).
211 11: Fixed ps_include.c so it properly handles %%BeginGlobal and %%EndGlobal.
212 Added braces and compare page.start to page.end instead of 0.
214 12: Added xymove(hpos, vpos) for \X'PS ...' request - near the end of devcntrl().
215 Must output position info for following PostScript.
217 13: Added a call to endtext() immediately before the oput() call for \N'...'
218 requests. Without it spacing often messed up with -e2 but not -e0.
220 ------------------------
222 ------------------------
224 1: postio can run as one or two processes (-R option) and can establish an
225 interactive connection with a postscript printer (-i option). Parsing of
226 status reports has been improved. The status query mechanism can be disabled
227 using the -q option. An exit status of 1 implies a system error (eg. can't
228 open the line) while 2 usually means there was an error in the PostScript
229 file. By default postio runs as a single process. The -B, -R, and -q options
230 can be used to speed things up some. A version of the program (previously
231 supplied in postio.tmp) that can help if you seem to be having flow control
232 problems can be obtained using the -S option. It's not generally recommended
233 and should only be used as a last resort!
235 2: Several widthshow encoding schemes have been added to dpost and can reduce
236 print time by 20% or more. The method used to encode lines of text can be
237 changed on the command line using the -e option. Level 0 produces output
238 essentially identical to previous versions of dpost. The default can be
239 changed by modifying the definition of ENCODING in ./Makefile. At present
240 only level 0 is thoroughly tested, although level 2 (ie. -e2) may be the
241 default and is undoubtedly worth a try.
243 3: dpost now supports color selection and reverse video. Access in troff is via
244 the stand-alone macro package ./macros/color. Examples are,
246 .so /usr/lib/macros/color
247 .CL red "this prints in red"
248 .CL "white on black" "and this prints white text on a black background"
250 The postscript procedures that handle color and reverse video can be found
251 in ./postscript/color.ps. Additional colors can be added to the colordict
252 dictionary defined in ./postscript/color.ps.
254 4: The dpost drawing routines have been improved and have been moved from the
255 prologue (ie. ./postscript/dpost.ps) to ./postscript/draw.ps. That file is
256 only included if needed. Drawing routines now support the ability to group
257 a series of drawing commands together as a single path. May be useful for
258 future versions of pic that wish to fill regions with colors or gray levels.
259 Access is via the new "x X BeginPath" and "x X DrawPath" device control
260 commands. In addition there's some complicated PostScript code in file
261 ./postscript/baseline.ps, that can be used to set text along an arbitrary
262 curve. It's terribly confusing and I doubt anyone will have the patience to
263 bother to figure it out.
265 5: A simple picture packing troff preprocessor (picpack) has been included and
266 the code needed to recover pictures and text has been added to dpost. The
267 program is designed to supplement to the original picture inclusion mechanism,
268 and should ONLY be used when absolutely necessary. Using dpost to pull picture
269 files into a document is strongly recommended and will always be the more
270 efficient and portable approach. picpack simply provides a way to combine
271 pictures and text in a single file before dpost is executed. It may help in
272 a distributed printing environment where the user runs everything through
273 troff while a spooling daemon (eg. lp) handles the postprocessing. There
274 are serious disadvantages to this approach, with perhaps the most important
275 being that troff output files (when picpack is used) will likely result in
276 files that can no longer be reliably passed through other important post-
277 processors like proof.
279 6: Code to handle host resident PostScript fonts in dpost has been tested and
280 finally works. The -H option points dpost to a host resident font directory,
281 which by default is NULL. Host resident font files stored in that directory
282 must be assigned a name that corresponds to the one or two character troff
283 font name. Width tables must also be built (see buildtables/README), the new
284 binary font files must be installed in /usr/lib/font/devpost, and a mapping
285 definition from troff's name to the PostScript font name must be added to
286 ./postscript/dpost.ps.
288 7: The default pattern length in postdmd has been reduced to from 10 to 6 bytes.
289 Printers with fast processors (eg. PS-810s) often benefit from a further
290 reduction, while optimal performance on slower printers (eg PS-800s) may
291 require larger pattern sizes. The pattern length can be set using the -b
292 option. Increasing the pattern size usually increases the size of the output
295 8: Line drawing in posttek and postbgi includes code that automatically ties
296 lines to device space coordinates when you select a non-zero width. Helps
297 eliminate the variation in line thickness that many observed. The default
298 line width in posttek and postbgi is still 0 (which gets 1 pixel). If you
299 want a different default change the definition of variable linewidth in files
300 ./postscript/posttek.ps and ./postscript/postbgi.ps.
302 9: Defocused lines in posttek have been fixed.
304 10: postbgi now supports color and can be used to translate most PRISM (color
305 BGI) jobs. Special device specific tuning needed for many PRISM jobs can be
306 enabled by using the -P"/prism true" option. Missing pieces (eg. subroutines)
307 needed for translating PRISM jobs, have also been implemented.
309 11: postreverse can reverse the pages in documents that conform to Adobe's 1.0
310 or 2.0 file structuring conventions, and it works with all the translators in
311 this package. The new version is backwards compatible, but files produced by
312 the new translators should not be passed through old versions of postreverse.
313 The likely result will be no output at all. If you choose to do a partial
314 installation put the new postreverse up first!
316 12: All translators attempt to conform to Adobe's Version 2.0 file structuring
317 conventions. dpost output falls short, but only in the interest of efficiency.
318 Passing dpost output through postreverse (perhaps with the -r option) produces
319 a minimally conforming PostScript file.
321 13: All the translators now support three options that pass arbitrary PostScript
322 through to the output file. The -P and -C options add a string and the
323 contents of a file respectively immediately after the prologue. It's assumed
324 whatever is added is legitimate PostScript - there is no checking. In each
325 case the added PostScript code becomes part of the job's global environment.
327 The -R option can be used to request special action (eg. manualfeed) on a
328 global or page basis. The argument should be "request", "request:page", or
329 "request:page:file". If page is given as 0 or omitted the request applies
330 globally. If file is omitted the lookup is in /usr/lib/postscript/ps.requests.
331 The collection of recognized requests can be modified or extended by changing
332 /usr/lib/postscript/ps.requests.
334 14: PostScript code (from Johnathan Shopiro) that produces bolder versions of the
335 Courier fonts has been included in file postscript/fatcourier.ps. The file
336 can be added to individual prologue files (eg. dpost.ps) or pulled in as
337 needed using the -C option.
339 15: postmd is a new program that can be used to display a large matrix as a gray
340 scale image. May help if you're looking for patterns in a large matrix. A very
341 optimistic estimate suggests you can display up to a 600x600 matrix (with five
342 different shades of gray) on 300dpi printer using 8.5x11 inch paper.
344 16: What's available in buildtables has been cleaned up and works well with the
345 new version of postio. It can be used to have PostScript printers build troff
346 width tables for both printer and host resident fonts.
348 17: The PostScript bind operator has been applied to all procedures that are
349 expected to be executed more than once. Redefined save and restore procedures
350 are no longer needed and saverestore.ps is not included in this package.
352 18: The bizarre PostScript code used to get to the upper left corner of a page
353 in old versions of dpost.ps and postprint.ps has been replaced by something
354 that's at least slightly more comprehensible. All prologues have also been
355 changed so picture inclusion (eg. including a pic picture that's been run
356 through troff and dpost) should work better than previous versions. Still
357 missing (from most translators) is the %%BoundingBox comment and even when
358 it's put out (by postdmd) only the dimensions are correct - sorry!
360 19: The careless mistake in the DKHOST section of postio that some noticed belongs
361 to me (not Allan Buckwalter) and has now been fixed.
363 20: By default all prologues still use the current clipping path to determine page
364 dimensions, but that behavior can be disabled by setting boolean useclippath
365 (in each prologue) to false. In that case the page dimensions will be taken
366 from array pagebbox, which by default is initialized to 8x11 inch paper. The
367 -P options (in each translator) can change useclippth and pagebbox.
369 21: New in the misc directory is sample lp support from Maryann Csaszar and a
370 simple program that converts host resident font files obtained from a Macintosh
371 to a format that works on Unix.
