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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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