


                       CONFIG.TXT
                       ==========

              (C)Microform AB 1998-09-21

This file describes the initial plotter configuration to be done
when VARKON is installed for the first time. You may also find
some useful information in the "Printing and plotting" section
of the VARKON users manual.

 1: Move all files in this directory to a place where they
    can rest in peace and don't risk to be owerwritten or replaced
    when a new version of VARKON is installed. This configuration
    is not supposed to be repeated each time a new version of
    VARKON is installed, only when changes are made to your
    plotting hardware in the future.
    
 2: Change the definition of VARKON_PLT in VARKON's start script
    to point to the new place so that each time VARKON is started
    your private copy of m135.INC is loaded instead of the version
    supplied with the system.

 3: Edit your private version of m135.INC according to the 
    following:

    A: If you have only one plotter/printer use the following
       short version of m135. Edit the title of m135 to name
       the right configurationfile for your plotter/printer. 
       a1 = oce/benson, a2 = calcomp and so on. See the full
       version of m135 below. Also remove the full version of m135.

       VARKON for Windows95/NT uses the file a32 to print through
       the WIN32 printing system. In this case there is no need
       to care about what kind of hardware your printer is or if
       there is more than one since WIN32 takes care of this.

m135 = "a1"
       "DUMMY",a0;

    B: If you have more than one plotter/printer edit the
       following version of m135 to include the devices you
       actually have and remove any devices you dont
       have. Also remove the short version of m135.

m135 = "PLOTTER"
       "hp7475",a4
       "hp laser",a9
       "epson",a11
       "ibm proprinter",a13
       "postscript",a15;

 4: Finally edit the configurationfile or files included in your
    version of m135. If for example you have a HP laser printer
    you would have to edit the configuration file named a9. 

    The file a9 might look something like this on a UNIX system:

! a9 = HP-LASERJET 3 laserwriter. Spooler = laser
 hpcl5 <
 | lp -dlaser -s &
 act_job
 -s1
 
    The first (uncommented) line of a configuration file shows
    the name of the driver to be used followed by a "less than"
    character for input redirection. VARKON uses this line and
    the following to make up the complete command sent to
    the shell when a plot job is started. 

    Next line shows how and where to send the output. Usually
    through a pipe to a printer spooler.

    Line 3 shows the name of the PLT-file to process. act_job is
    a symbol for a file with the same name as the active job.

    The last line shows the parameters to pass to the driver
    when processing the PLT-file.

    An optional 5:th line includes the name of an optional PEN-
    file to use with older plotterdrivers that only support
    variable penwidth (linewidth) through PEN-files. The new
    linux drivers and the new driver for WIN32 introduced
    in VARKON 1.16 all support variable linewidth directly
    through the WIDTH attribute. Dont't supply the -pf option
    or the name of a PEN-file (line 5) if you use the WIDTH
    attribute.

    VARKON includes three interactive functions to start a plot
    job. The easy ones are "Autoplot" and  "Window" and the more
    specialized is called "Manual plot". You will find them in
    the graphics menu under plotting. They will all read your
    m135 and if it contains more than one plotter (as described
    above) they will prompt you for which one to use. Once the
    name of the plotter is known the plotfunction reads the
    corresponding configuration file (a1, a2.....) and uses
    its contents to create the appropriate shell-command that
    will start the actual plot process.

    Here are a few more sample configuration files:

    ! a11 = Monochrome Epson printer using ghostscript.
     $VARKON_ROOT/bin/postscript -bw <
     | gs -DEVICE=epson | lp
     act_job
     -s1.0 -v90 -x-210

    ! a15 = Genuine postscript color printer.
     $VARKON_ROOT/bin/postscript <
     | lp
     act_job
     -s1.0

    ! a13 = IBM-Proprinter with custom penfile
     nice -19 $VARKON_ROOT/bin/ibmpro <
     | lp -Pibm102
     act_job
     -s0 -x-15 -h0 -p24 -w200 -l82 -pf
     /usr/v3/adm/artikel/pennfile.PEN
