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1990-04-17
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RUMDJET -- A DVI Driver for the HP DeskJet
============================================
W. Kaspar / H.-W. Kisker
Westf\"alische Wilhelms Universit\"at M\"unster
Universit\"atsrechenzentrum
April 1989
RUMDJET (RUM = Rechenzentrum der Universit\"at M\"unster) is a DVI
driver for the HP DeskJet printer. It is part of an extensive \TeX
toolkit which one of us (H.-W. Kisker) has developed during the last
year for the IBM PC.
The driver is a dedicated version for IBM PC compatible computers
running MS-DOS. Although it is derived from Beebe's DVI driver family,
no efforts have been made to achieve portability to other hardware or
other operating systems.
The state of the software is preliminary. The runtime behaviour is
rather stable indeed, but the program is still under development. Above
all the source code at the time is not up to our normal standard and
will not be distributed by default. For those who are courageous enough
to deal with more or less `writeonly' code, the sources are available on
special request. The final version of the driver including the sources
will be available together with the above mentioned \TeX\ toolkit in a
few month.
Notes on Concepts and Facilties
-------------------------------
The HP DeskJet is a pleasingly silent printer which offers an excellent
300 dpi print quality at a very attractive price. We consider it as a
low cost laser printer alternative for everybody's everyday use. The
greatest disadvantage is that by default the printer comes without a
single byte of RAM for downloading fonts. Even upgrading it with the
maximum of two RAM cartridges will supply no more than 256 KB of font
storage. For many documents this amount is far away from being
sufficient. Therefore most of the print job has to be done in grafic
mode. Unfortunately this brings two unpleasent aspects into account.
First the driver has to manage a rather great bitmap (over 1 MB for a
default DIN A4 page) and second printing in high resolution grafic mode
is a very dull affair.
Both problems can be solved by reducing the resolution to 150 or even
100 dpi. RUMDJET offers this possibility as an option. For high quality
output, however, the 300 dpi resolution is indispensable. This demands a
careful handling of storage. The usual approach of swapping the bitmap
to disk led to an unacceptable increase of processing time. Better
results we obtained by deviding the page from top to bottom into several
pieces which were processed and printed independently. The multiple
reading of the dvi file can be almost neglected.
Some other points concerning the driver software should be mentioned:
o RUMDJET does not need any swap space on disk. For us this point is
rather important. All of the university PCs are connected to a
campus network. Via the network, software including \TeX\ can be
loaded, but there is no disk capacity to store private data. So all
the micro computers which are equiped just with a floppy disk drive
can run \TeX\ and RUMDJET, but cannot store a great bitmap.
o The output can be directed to a printer immediately. This helps to
avoid the creation of big printer output files. RUMDJET is able to
compute the next output part while the DeskJet is processing its
internal print buffer. So the printer is busy without any
interruption.
o An arbitrary number of arbitrary large fonts can be used in a
document. If the RAM-storage is not sufficient to hold a character
image, the image is ored line by line into the current bitmap
immediately. The above mentioned toolkit contains a set of programs
to insert pictures created by normal PC software into a \TeX\
document. This is achieved by making a special font with possibly
very large characters of every picture. RUMDJET can handle those
fonts independent of their sizes.
o The output can be sent to a HP LaserJet of an arbitrary version as
well.
o For a quick look at the printed document the resolution can be
reduced to 150 or 100 dpi. This leads to a noticeable decrease of
printing time and printfile size.
Implementation Efficiency
-------------------------
According to Beebe we measured the runtime for processing this document
on a ACER 1100. The ACER 1100 is a 386 based micro computer running at
16 MHz. Here are the results:
Operation time size
(using PK fonts) (sec) (kbytes)
----------------------------------------------
RUMDJET (300 dpi) 100 942
RUMDJET (150 dpi) 67 271
RUMDJET (100 dpi) 50 134
DVIJEP (300 dpi) 62 60
DVITOS (180 dpi) 176 827
----------------------------------------------
The values for DVIJEP and DVITOS have been added for comparison.
Outlook
-------
The \TeX\ toolkit for the PC which we mentioned above will be ready for
distribution in the second part of 1989.
It will consist of:
o the DVI driver RUMDJET for the HP DeskJet (300, 150 and 100 dpi),
o the DVI driver RUMNEC for the NEC P5/P6/P7 printer family (360 and
180 dpi),
o the DVI driver RUMVIEW for a wide range of video cards including
those with 1024x768 pixel resolution,
o the Program ADI2PXL which converts Autodesk's ADI pixel file
format into \TeX\ fonts,
o a set of conversion programs which converts the grafic output of
nearly every PC Program to ADI file format and
o a set of utility programs to manipulate ADI files and \TeX\ fonts
including a font editor.
The RUMDJET driver itself will be extended by several additional
features for example the possibility to specify a list of pathnames for
searching pixel or TFM files.
Although we consider the released preliminary version of RUMDJET
to be rather stable, we are of course highly interested in bugs or
malefunctions which will show up during everyday use. Please don't
hesitate to write us if you run into an error.
Obtaining the Programm
----------------------
o Get it from the file server {\tt listserv@dhdurz1.bitnet}.
o Send one of the following formatted disks to the authors:
3 1/2" 720 KB
3 1/2" 1.44 MB
5 1/4" 360 KB
5 1/4" 1.2 MB
Addresses of the authors
------------------------
Postal mail:
Wolfgang Kaspar H.-W. Kisker
University of M\"unster University of M\"unster
University Computing Center University Computing Center
Einsteinstra\ss e 60 Einsteinstra\ss e 60
D-4400 M\"unster D-4400 M\"unster
Federal Republic of Germany Federal Republic of Germany
E-mail:
urz86@dmswwu1a.bitnet urz10@dmswwu1a.bitnet
phone:
49 251 832473 49 251 832467