From: sl0k3@pluto.ee.usu.edu (Saturn)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: dvi to epson  (summary)
Date: 8 Apr 92 02:10:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: cc.1992Apr7.201057.54286
Organization: Utah State University


>    Where can I get a dvi to epson fx850 driver?  Please email.

As you use an Epson fx850, perhaps you have an IBM compatible PC, XT
or AT.  In that case, I suggest you obtain "emTeX", a free and
thorough TeX and METAFONT package.  The only condition is that if
you distribute any part of it, you also distribute the whole of it
- I suppose so that the author, Eberhard Mattes, is not deluged with
complaints.

EmTeX is avaiable at all major TeX archives, such as:

    ymir.claremont.edu
    niord.shsu.edu
    labrea.stanford.edu

Now, to be honest, I don't see an "fx850.dot" parameter file in the
emTeX "DVIDRV" package, among those for emTeX's generic dot matrix
printer driver, dvidot, but I do see "fx80.dot" and "fx100.dot", and
several for Epson LQ series printers.

The Epson fx80 has resolution 240x216, so I suppose the first question
is what resolution has the fx850?  As I recall, Eberhard Mattes writes
that it should be straightforward to write a parameter file for just
about any dot matrix printer; the files are not grossly long,
so emTeX should do the trick.

Besides this, emTeX is a fine implementation of TeX for the IBM PC.
As I said, it's thorough: it contains TeX, all the TeXware, METAFONT,
all the METAFONTware, all of Computer Modern in .mf source and in
.tfm and .pk files.  The PK files are stored in font libraries -
which are useful to save disk space, as you can add and subtract from
font libraries and create your own.  It includes TeXcad, an experimental
but useful picture environment CAD editor.  Also included is WEB (the
Pascal version - the C version is freely available elsewhere).

EmTeX also comes with BibTeX, MakeInd(e)x, PKedit (for editing PK font
files - I might use it one day), the fontlib program (alluded to above),
a neat program called MFJob that makes using METAFONT much easier,
and a Remove program for selectively deleting parts of the emTeX
system (eg, for replacement).

EmTeX's .dvi previewers and printer drivers understand some "\special"s
for improved line drawing.  Moreover, some graph drawing programs such as
GnuPlot can create output that uses emTeX \specials.  The separate, free,
"dvips" program by Tomas Rokicki (look for the current version 5.47),
in its MS-DOS form, is designed to integrate with emTeX.

Dvips produces a PostScript file with a correct Bounding Box comment,
so you can print on a PostScript printer.  Works beautifully on an
Apple Laserwriter, and on a Qume ScripTen.

Many TeX related packages (psfig, TransFig, METAPOST, tpic, TeXdraw) mesh
with Rokicki's "dvips", either by Rokicki's deliberate design, or theirs,
or because Rokicki does things well, or because of the flexibility
of PostScript or because of TeX's abilities, so with emTeX things fit
together well.  Also, dvips is very portable, and is freely available for
unix systems, so you can run TeX on a PC, put the DVI file on a Sun or
a MIPS, an AIX, a Pyramid, or wherever, and run dvips there.  Possibly
there is a VMS port as well.

An additional emTeX driver, "dvimsp", converts .dvi files to either
Microsoft Paint (for Windows) (.msp) or to Paintbrush (.pcx) graphics.
The DVIDRV manual imports MSP graphics which look fine on an HP Laserjet,
so you can do the same.

EmTeX has decent documentation, in both Emglish and German (it is
designed in Germany).  Eberhard Mattes maintains and upgrades emTeX,
so it becomes better while remaining "upwardly" compatible.  Eberhard
is also in close communication with Rainer Sch\"opf and Frank Mittelbach,
who are the current principal designers of LaTeX, "inheriting" the
mantle of Leslie Lamport.  So this is no fly-by-night.  In fact, if you
ask for a recommendation from those in the know, "emTeX" is the most
likely answer you'll receive.

After trying SBTeX and SBMF, which are decent programs but incomplete
TeX and METAFONT packages, I can say from experience that it is much
easier to fetch the whole of emTeX, than to search the world for
the missing pieces to add to another package.  Besides which, whenever
you want to upgrade, eg to the newest versions of LaTeX and Plain TeX,
then emTeX happily accepts them (which is as things should be).

If you have a 386 or 486, then use emTeX's "tex386" with the "bigtex"
format (for which tex386 searches automatically).

There is another TeX for the 386, called "TeXas".  It was recently
released, is free, and is available at one or more of the main TeX
archives.  However, I have not examined it or tried it, so I don't
know whether it includes much besides the TeX program, nor how it
performs besides emTeX's tex386.

All the best,

gt
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The Nelson Beebe driver set includes dvieps which works fine for the
FX850.  That's what I use.  I got mine from the archive at ymir.

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 I am on unix environment (SUNOS 4.1.2) networked system.
I got dvieps from ymir.claremont.edu ( all files are needed for compilation)
My tex fonts are in /usr/local/lib/tex/fonts  but when I ran dvieps
it was not able to find those fonts. Therefore, it always set the output to
zero size fonts. Essentially, I did not get anything out of it.  If some of 
can suggest a remedy for that, I would appreciate it.  



Sudhakaran Ram