Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 22:49:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: Joseph Stein <joes@spiritone.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Handbook - ascii form?? Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.970622214919.18837A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <199706230315.UAA05119@joes.users.spiritone.com>
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On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, Joseph Stein wrote: > > FFrreeeeBBSSDD HHaannddbbooookk > > which is exactly what will happen on a non-conforming printer that does > not understand how to interpret a 'DEL' character (ascii 008 or ^H) There aren't any ^H characters in the file, as far as I can tell. A hex dump shows all the duplicate letters. > > > The various suggestions to repair this text, such as piping it through > > col -b, running little sed scripts, and so forth are inappropriate from > > the point of view that this document (and the FAQ, which has the same > > problems) are supposed to be useful to people running dos/Windows as well > > as people who may not yet be familiar with various Unix utilities. > > But, have you tried those suggestions? Try outputting the file to a line > printer and see if your results are any better. I have tried these suggestions; they have no effect whatsoever. I haven't got a line printer; I have a variety of HP Laserjets. Have you tried downloading handbook.ascii and applying these suggestions? >From the web/ftp site, which is where people interested in installing FreeBSD get it? > These files ARE straight ascii text. They are designed for overstrike to > emphasize certain portions or underline them without using printer-specific > control characters. Since this doesn't work for most people, I'd rate that a design error. > Laser-jet printers (in my opinion) are notorious for not interpreting ASCII > 008 correctly. My Laserjet does a fine job of backing up and overstriking or over- printing....even from dos edit. So it would appear neither the hardware nor the software is buggy. > > But these suggestions also seem to be in error, because the down-loaded > > handbook.ascii doesn't have any ^H codes or any other codes in it; it's > > what I would call hard-coded just as it appears above. Doing > > substitutions for ^H or running it though col -b have no effect on it > > whatsoever. > > Yes, they do... Not on a copy downloaded from the web site--from the link new users are likely to follow. > > > Thus, the code that generates handbook.ascii is broken, right? > > No. The code that generates the files is one hundred percent okay. Maybe, maybe not. > It's flaky hardware (or in the case of Micro$loth, buggy software). Can't blame this one on HP and Microsoft, Joe. Annelise
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