1grolj4(1) General Commands Manual grolj4(1)
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6 grolj4 - groff output driver for HP LaserJet 4 and compatible printers
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9 grolj4 [-l] [-c num-copies] [-d [n]] [-F font-directory] [-p paper-
10 format] [-w line-width] [file ...]
11 grolj4 --help
13 grolj4 -v
15 grolj4 --version
16
18 This GNU roff output driver translates the output of troff(1) into a
19 PCL5 format suitable for an HP LaserJet 4 printer. Normally, grolj4 is
20 invoked by groff(1) when the latter is given the “-T lj4” option. (In
21 this installation, ps is the default output device.) Use groff's -P
22 option to pass any options shown above to grolj4. If no file arguments
23 are given, or if file is “-”, grolj4 reads the standard input stream.
24 Output is written to the standard output stream.
25 Typefaces
27 grolj4 supports the standard four styles: R (roman), I (italic), B
28 (bold), and BI (bold-italic). Fonts are grouped into families A, C, G,
29 O, T, TN, U, and UC having members in each style.
30 AB Arial Bold
32 ABI Arial Bold Italic
33 AI Arial Italic
34 AR Arial Roman
35 CB Courier Bold
36 CBI Courier Bold Italic
37 CI Courier Italic
38 CR Courier Roman
39 GB Garamond Halbfett
40 GBI Garamond Kursiv Halbfett
41 GI Garamond Kursiv
42 GR Garamond Antiqua
43 OB CG Omega Bold
44 OBI CG Omega Bold Italic
45 OI CG Omega Italic
46 OR CG Omega Roman
47 OB CG Omega Bold
48 OBI CG Omega Bold Italic
49 OI CG Omega Italic
50 OR CG Omega Roman
51 TB CG Times Bold
52 TBI CG Times Bold Italic
53 TI CG Times Italic
54 TR CG Times Roman
55 TNRB M Times Bold
56 TNRBI M Times Bold Italic
57 TNRI M Times Italic
58 TNRR M Times Roman
59 UB Univers Bold
60 UBI Univers Bold Italic
61 UI Univers Medium Italic
62 UR Univers Medium
63 UCB Univers Condensed Bold
64 UCBI Univers Condensed Bold Italic
65 UCI Univers Condensed Medium Italic
66 UCR Univers Condensed Medium
67 The following fonts are not members of a family.
69 ALBB Albertus Extra Bold
71 ALBR Albertus Medium
72 AOB Antique Olive Bold
73 AOI Antique Olive Italic
74 AOR Antique Olive Roman
75 CLARENDON Clarendon
76 CORONET Coronet
77 LGB Letter Gothic Bold
78 LGI Letter Gothic Italic
79 LGR Letter Gothic Roman
80 MARIGOLD Marigold
81 The special font is S (PostScript Symbol); SYMBOL (M Symbol), and
83 WINGDINGS (Wingdings) are also available but not mounted by default.
84 Paper format and device description file
86 grolj4 supports paper formats “A4”, “B5”, “C5”, “com10”, “DL”,
87 “executive”, “legal”, “letter”, and “monarch”. These are matched case-
88 insensitively. The -p option overrides any setting in the device de‐
89 scription file DESC. If neither specifies a paper format, “letter” is
90 assumed.
91 Font description files
93 grolj4 recognizes four font description file directives in addition to
94 those documented in groff_font(5).
95 pclweight n
97 Set the stroke weight to n, an integer in the range -7 to +7;
98 the default is 0.
99 pclstyle n
101 Set the style to n, an integer in the range 0 to 32767; the de‐
102 fault is 0.
103 pclproportional n
105 Set the proportional spacing Boolean flag to n, which can be ei‐
106 ther 0 or 1; the default is 0.
107 pcltypeface n
109 Set the typeface family to n, an integer in the range 0 to
110 65535; the default is 0.
111 Drawing commands
113 An additional drawing command is recognized as an extension to those
114 documented in groff(7).
115 \D'R dh dv'
117 Draw a rule (solid black rectangle) with one corner at the draw‐
118 ing position, and the diagonally opposite corner at the drawing
119 position +(dh,dv), at which the drawing position will be after‐
120 ward. This generates a PCL fill rectangle command, and so will
121 work on printers that do not support HP-GL/2, unlike the other
122 \D commands.
123 Fonts
125 Nominally, all Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4-series and newer printers
126 have the same internal fonts: 45 scalable fonts and one bitmapped
127 Lineprinter font. The scalable fonts are available in sizes between
128 0.25 points and 999.75 points, in 0.25-point increments; the
129 Lineprinter font is available only in 8.5-point size.
130 The LaserJet font files included with groff assume that all printers
132 since the LaserJet 4 are identical. There are some differences between
133 fonts in the earlier and more recent printers, however. The LaserJet 4
134 printer used Agfa Intellifont technology for 35 of the internal scal‐
135 able fonts; the remaining 10 scalable fonts were TrueType. Beginning
136 with the LaserJet 4000-series printers introduced in 1997, all scalable
137 internal fonts have been TrueType. The number of printable glyphs dif‐
138 fers slightly between Intellifont and TrueType fonts (generally, the
139 TrueType fonts include more glyphs), and there are some minor differ‐
140 ences in glyph metrics. Differences among printer models are described
141 in the PCL 5 Comparison Guide and the PCL 5 Comparison Guide Addendum
142 (for printers introduced since approximately 2001).
143 LaserJet printers reference a glyph by a combination of a 256-glyph
145 symbol set and an index within that symbol set. Many glyphs appear in
146 more than one symbol set; all combinations of symbol set and index that
147 reference the same glyph are equivalent. For each glyph, hpftodit(1)
148 searches a list of symbol sets, and selects the first set that contains
149 the glyph. The printing code generated by hpftodit is an integer that
150 encodes a numerical value for the symbol set in the high byte(s), and
151 the index in the low byte. See groff_font(5) for a complete descrip‐
152 tion of the font file format; symbol sets are described in greater de‐
153 tail in the PCL 5 Printer Language Technical Reference Manual.
154 Two of the scalable fonts, Symbol and Wingdings, are bound to 256-glyph
156 symbol sets; the remaining scalable fonts, as well as the Lineprinter
157 font, support numerous symbol sets, sufficient to enable printing of
158 more than 600 glyphs.
159 The metrics generated by hpftodit assume that the DESC file contains
161 values of 1200 for res and 6350 for unitwidth, or any combination
162 (e.g., 2400 and 3175) for which res × unitwidth = 7620000. Although HP
163 PCL 5 LaserJet printers support an internal resolution of 7200 units
164 per inch, they use a 16-bit signed integer for positioning; if devlj4
165 is to support U.S. ledger paper (11 in × 17 in; in = inch), the maximum
166 usable resolution is 32767 ÷ 17, or 1927 units per inch, which rounds
167 down to 1200 units per inch. If the largest required paper dimension
168 is less (e.g., 8.5 in × 11 in, or A5), a greater res (and lesser
169 unitwidth) can be specified.
170 Font metrics for Intellifont fonts were provided by Tagged Font Metric
172 (TFM) files originally developed by Agfa/Compugraphic. The TFM files
173 provided for these fonts supported 600+ glyphs and contained extensive
174 lists of kerning pairs.
175 To accommodate developers who had become accustomed to TFM files, HP
177 also provided TFM files for the 10 TrueType fonts included in the
178 LaserJet 4. The TFM files for TrueType fonts generally included less
179 information than the Intellifont TFMs, supporting fewer glyphs, and in
180 most cases, providing no kerning information. By the time the Laser‐
181 Jet 4000 printer was introduced, most developers had migrated to other
182 means of obtaining font metrics, and support for new TFM files was very
183 limited. The TFM files provided for the TrueType fonts in the Laser‐
184 Jet 4000 support only the Latin 2 (ISO 8859-2) symbol set, and include
185 no kerning information; consequently, they are of little value for any
186 but the most rudimentary documents.
187 Because the Intellifont TFM files contain considerably more informa‐
189 tion, they generally are preferable to the TrueType TFM files even for
190 use with the TrueType fonts in the newer printers. The metrics for the
191 TrueType fonts are very close, though not identical, to those for the
192 earlier Intellifont fonts of the same names. Although most output us‐
193 ing the Intellifont metrics with the newer printers is quite accept‐
194 able, a few glyphs may fail to print as expected. The differences in
195 glyph metrics may be particularly noticeable with composite parenthe‐
196 ses, brackets, and braces used by eqn(1). A script, located in /usr/
197 share/groff/1.23.0/font/devlj4/generate, can be used to adjust the met‐
198 rics for these glyphs in the special font “S” for use with printers
199 that have all TrueType fonts.
200 At the time HP last supported TFM files, only version 1.0 of the Uni‐
202 code standard was available. Consequently, many glyphs lacking as‐
203 signed code points were assigned by HP to the Private Use Area (PUA).
204 Later versions of the Unicode standard included code points outside the
205 PUA for many of these glyphs. The HP-supplied TrueType TFM files use
206 the PUA assignments; TFM files generated from more recent TrueType font
207 files require the later Unicode values to access the same glyphs. Con‐
208 sequently, two different mapping files may be required: one for the HP-
209 supplied TFM files, and one for more recent TFM files.
210
212 --help displays a usage message, while -v and --version show version
213 information; all exit afterward.
214 -c num-copies
216 Format num-copies copies of each page.
217 -d [n] Use duplex mode n: 1 is long-side binding (default), and 2 is
219 short-side binding.
220 -F font-directory
222 Prepend directory font-directory/devname to the search path for
223 font and device description files; name is the name of the de‐
224 vice, usually lj4.
225 -l Format the document in landscape orientation.
227 -p paper-format
229 Set the paper format to paper-format, which must be a valid pa‐
230 per format as described above.
231 -w line-width
233 Set the default line thickness to line-width thousandths of an
234 em; the default is 40 (0.04 em).
235
237 GROFF_FONT_PATH
238 lists directories in which to seek the selected output device's
239 directory of device and font description files. See troff(1)
240 and groff_font(5).
241
243 /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devlj4/DESC
244 describes the lj4 output device.
245 /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/font/devlj4/F
247 describes the font known as F on device lj4.
248 /usr/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/lj4.tmac
250 defines macros for use with the lj4 output device. It is auto‐
251 matically loaded by troffrc when the lj4 output device is se‐
252 lected.
253
255 Small dots.
256
258 HP PCL/PJL Reference: PCL 5 Printer Language Technical Reference
259 Manual, Part I ⟨http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/bpl13210.pdf⟩
260 hpftodit(1), groff(1), troff(1), groff_out(5), groff_font(5),
262 groff_char(7)
263groff 1.23.0 2 November 2023 grolj4(1)