








                            TRANSCRIPT 2.1
                            Release Notes


                      Adobe Systems Incorporated

                         1585 Charleston Road
                            P.O. Box 7900
                    Mountain View, CA   94309-7900





_1.  _I_n_t_r_o_d_u_c_t_i_o_n

These _R_e_l_e_a_s_e _N_o_t_e_s are included in the product for the following pur-
poses:

o+    to outline new features and bug fixes in the release

o+    to identify any known problems with the release

o+    to mention some of the areas for future work

Detailed descriptions of the various TRANSCRIPT filters are documented
in their UNIX _m_a_n pages.

The TRANSCRIPT Overview details the product structure and the function
of all TRANSCRIPT programs.  The TRANSCRIPT Installation Instructions
gives more information to systems administrators about the TRANSCRIPT
software, file locations, etc.

_2.  _R_e_l_e_a_s_e _2._1 - _C_h_a_n_g_e_s _s_i_n_c_e _r_e_l_e_a_s_e _2._0

_2._1.  _N_e_w _f_e_a_t_u_r_e_s

Font families
         The various _t_r_o_f_f tools (_p_s_r_o_f_f, _p_t_r_o_f_f, _p_s_d_i_t, _a_n_d _p_s_c_a_t)
         accept the specification of a _f_o_n_t _f_a_m_i_l_y on the command
         line.  This family is mounted for the R/I/B/BI fonts, thus
         making it the "default" font family for the document.  The
         following font families are provided with this release:
         AvantGarde     Bookman        Courier
_________________________
POSTSCRIPT is a registered trademark of  Adobe  Systems
Incorporated.
TRANSCRIPT is a trademark of Adobe Systems  Incorporat-
ed.
UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.




                         25 September 1987





                                - 2 -


         Garamond       HelvNarrow (Helvetica-Narrow)
         Helvetica      Lubalin        NewCentury
         Palatino       Souvenir       Zapf
         (The Zapf family consists of ZapfChancery-MediumItalic as the
         _r_o_m_a_n font, Times-Roman as the _i_t_a_l_i_c font, and Times-Bold as
         the bold font.

Fonts    Font information has been provided for each of the fonts in
         the font families listed above.  this list includes most of
         the resident fonts in POSTSCRIPT printers.  _t_r_o_f_f names for
         the fonts have been defined.  See the psfonts(1) man page.

Enscript Enscript now does line-wrapping for long lines, rather than
         truncation.  Truncation can be specified as an option.

_m_a_n pagesThree new _m_a_n pages have been added:
         transcript(1), which gives a general overview of the TRAN-
         SCRIPT product,
         psfonts(1), which describes the font families and font names,
         and
         pssymbols(1), which lists the symbol character codes (such as
         \(oe) recognized by _p_s_r_o_f_f and _p_s_d_i_t.  This last man page can
         be printed on a POSTSCRIPT printer using psroff to show the
         symbol characters themselves.
         Also, the old transcript(8) man page, which detailed the
         spooling software, has been renamed pscomm(8).  A list of the
         important variables in the _p_s_i_n_t/_p_s_i_n_t_e_r_f_a_c_e script, and
         their functions, has been added to pscomm(8).  The cross-
         references among various man pages has been improved.

Installation
         There are a number of new options in the TRANSCRIPT installa-
         tion.  See the Installation Instructions, and the "config"
         file.

BANNERLAST on BSD UNIX
         TRANSCRIPT now allows two different options for handling the
         BANNERLAST setting under the BSD UNIX operating system.  See
         the Overview for more details.

_2._2.  _B_u_g _f_i_x_e_s _t_o _r_e_l_e_a_s_e _2._0

enscript Fixes to formfeed processing.  Fixed backspace to move back a
         column, so lines don't get truncated early.  Fixed margin
         setting in two-column mode; small point sizes work better.
         Fixed handling of input files that are not found.  Fixed
         parsing of ENSCRIPT variable, and added parsing of new AFM
         file format.

ps630    Fixed output creeping up on succeeding pages.  Fixed justifi-
         cation to work for: leading blanks and tabs, compressed and
         expanded print, and lines that are longer than the justifica-
         tion margins.  Fixed problem reading from standard input on
         some machines.  Fixed some problems that caused the first or



                         25 September 1987





                                - 3 -


         final line on a page not be be printed.  Increased maximum
         output line length to 1024.  Fixed underlining to be located
         in same place as underscore character.  ESCAPE-S now resets
         HMI.

ps4014   Pages with nothing drawn on them are not usually printed now.
         Fixed bug that caused the line style to change back to
         "solid".  Fixed problem that caused lines containing many
         vectors (more than 500) to create a POSTSCRIPT error.  Fixed
         problem that caused the final vector not to be printed.
         Error messages now report where in the input file the error
         was encountered.  Fixed problem that moved some vectors to
         left-hand side of page.  ESCAPE-FORMFEED has changed meaning:
         it now prints the current page and starts a new one.
         ESCAPE-ETB is now ignored.

psplot   Pages with nothing drawn on them are not usually printed now.
         Added "disconnected" line type, which is the same as the
         "solid" line type.

psroff   Added "-F" and "-D" switches for font family support.  PATH
         variable is set explicitly.  Fixed problem in which spooler
         options were lost unless job name was specified.  (See also
         psdit).

psdit    The location and shape of some special characters have been
         moved; see "_t_r_o_f_f special characters" below.  Character over-
         printing is partially fixed; \z works better.  Fixed the
         psdit _m_a_n page to give a correct example for incorporating
         POSTSCRIPT into a document; the old example was incorrect.
         An error message is now printed if font information cannot be
         found.  Added support for \X command, which is a method for
         incorporating user POSTSCRIPT into a document.  Fixed problem
         that caused an infinite loop for certain cases of early ter-
         mination.  Some of the drawing primitives (draw arc, draw
         line, etc.) have been changed to be smaller and more effi-
         cient, and some drawing location problems have been fixed.
         Fixed problem that caused coordinates to be written to the
         screen when certain drawing primitives were invoked.  Fixed
         problem in which characters were being overprinted before a
         font change in some cases.

afmdit   Added check to give characters that are too wide the widest
         width possible for the resolution TRANSCRIPT uses.

ptroff   Added "-F" switch for font family support.  PATH variable is
         set explicitly.  Fixed "while" loop test to work for any
         option string.  (See also pscat).

pscat    The psdit and pscat special character definitions are now
         identical.  The locations of some special characters have
         been moved; see "_t_r_o_f_f special characters" below.  The ini-
         tial vertical offset for BSD UNIX systems has been changed to
         be higher than the top of the page; this reflects the BSD



                         25 September 1987





                                - 4 -


         _t_r_o_f_f assumptions.  Fixed problems that occasionally caused
         the first character on a page, and some special characters,
         to be printed in incorrect locations.

pscatmap Added @INCLUDE command, and created a character correspon-
         dence table file that is included in most pscatmap input
         files.  Added DEFSYM font, which corresponds to new special
         character font.  Added parsing of new AFM file format.  Fixed
         uninitialized variable; on some systems this would result in
         pscatmap crashing with parsing errors.

_t_r_o_f_f special characters
         This section documents changes to many of the "symbol" char-
         acters that are used in _t_r_o_f_f/_d_i_t_r_o_f_f.  The following loca-
         tion and width changes were made:
         o+ Changed box rule and underline so that tbl boxes would meet
           at the corners.
         o+ Changed the "root extender" so that the square root symbol
           looks somewhat better.
         o+ Decreased the width of bracket characters, which makes eqn
           brackets look better.
         o+ The "box rule" character width is now 0.
         o+ Vertical rule-type characters have been moved to look
           better at high resolution.
         o+ The circle character has been moved right slightly.
         The "vertical bar" character is always taken from the symbol
         font; there is now no method for getting an italic vertical
         bar.  Changed charset ordering of characters in _d_i_t_r_o_f_f to
         make it less likely the .tc and .lc commands will fail.
         Fixed Courier fonts not to use ligatures.
Spooling programs: pscomm, psint, pstext, psrv
         pscomm has been re-arranged to be more reliable:
         o+ On startup, TRANSCRIPT "synchronizes" with the printer.
           This should eliminate problems that caused errors in the
           log file, jobs vanishing from the queue, etc.
         o+ A number of race conditions have been eliminated.  These
           gave rise to the printer queue hanging, "longjmp botches",
           and other random behavior.
         o+ Child processes are explicitly killed, and pscomm will not
           exit until its children have finished.
         o+ pscomm waits for the current job to end before starting the
           next one.  This should eliminate some accounting errors,
           banner page problems, and jobs hanging.
         o+ Accounting is more likely to work correctly.
         o+ Error reporting and error handling have been improved some-
           what.
         The following problems were also fixed in the spooling
         software:
         o+ Fixed problem that caused very small text files (less than
           12 characters) to vanish.
         o+ Fixed pscomm problem that handled standard input
           incorrectly when it was a pipe.
         o+ Banner line buffer overflow is now caught as an error; this
           should fix some problems that caused files with random



                         25 September 1987





                                - 5 -


           names to be created, random crashes and hangings of the
           spooling system, etc.
         o+ Fixed problem with blank pages in text files that sometimes
           resulted in a POSTSCRIPT error.
         o+ Changed page reversal algorithm to work correctly in more
           cases, and to print out an error when page reversal can't
           be done correctly and the POSTSCRIPT file says that page
           reversal can be done.
         o+ A bug was fixed which caused the string "%%" to echo as "%"
           in the log file; this only concerns POSTSCRIPT files which
           _g_e_n_e_r_a_t_e output themselves.
All filters
         All TRANSCRIPT filters now explicitly exit with a value of 0
         when processing has been completed successfully (that is,
         without significant errors).

_3.  _K_n_o_w_n _D_e_f_i_c_i_e_n_c_i_e_s _i_n _R_e_l_e_a_s_e _2._1

_3._1.  _T_h_e _f_o_l_l_o_w_i_n_g _b_u_g_s _a_r_e _k_n_o_w_n _t_o _e_x_i_s_t _i_n _R_e_l_e_a_s_e _2._1:
o+    Overprinting in psroff/psdit does not always work correctly, due
     to the method by which round-off errors are handled in psdit.
o+    The spooling software does not truncate long lines in spooled
     text files.  This can result in partial characters at the ends of
     lines.
o+    Mounting a font in psdit may get an overflow error message.  This
     is because the space for the font is allocated when psdit starts,
     rather than dynamically.  A work-around is to mount "large" fonts
     for psdit on startup.  The Courier fonts are smaller than most
     others.
o+    ps630 output cannot be page-reversed.  Also, long documents may
     run output of POSTSCRIPT "VM", and cannot be printed at all.
     Long documents will print correctly when they are split up into
     smaller pieces.
o+    enscript output in two-column mode will occasionally run over the
     margins for small points sizes.
o+    TRANSCRIPT assumes that a number of the UNIX system calls will
     never return an error; they are not checked for error returns.
     This can lead to obscure errors when system software is not con-
     figured correctly.  The case that was reported involved
     getpwuid() failing.

_3._2.  _T_h_e _f_o_l_l_o_w_i_n_g _p_r_o_b_l_e_m_s _h_a_v_e _b_e_e_n _e_n_c_o_u_n_t_e_r_e_d _i_n _s_y_s_t_e_m _s_o_f_t_w_a_r_e:
o+    The BSD UNIX spooler daemon will often not be restarted after an
     _a_c_t_i_v_e job has been removed from the queue.  An unprivileged user
     can use the restart command in the _l_p_c program to restart the
     demon.  This is a problem in the implementation of the lprm com-
     mand.  Note that the _l_p_c command may not be on a user's path, and
     that the command must be given on the _h_o_s_t machine that is com-
     municating directly to the printer.
o+    Under BSD UNIX, the BANNERLAST feature behaves incorrectly when
     multiple files or multiple copies are spooled with one _l_p_r
     request.  This is due to the order in which _p_s_o_f and _p_s_i_f (the
     ``of'' and ``if'' printcap filters) are invoked by the spooling
     daemon.  As of this release, BANNERLAST may be set either of two



                         25 September 1987





                                - 6 -


     ways; see the Overview for more information.  This problem does
     not otherwise effect the operation of TRANSCRIPT or the correct
     printing of documents.
o+    Under BSD UNIX, a system doing a reboot with items currently in a
     TRANSCRIPT spooler queue will print out the first job in the
     queue, and then that queue will hang.  This is a problem in the
     startup code for the spooler daemon.  There may be a workaround
     involving stopping all TRANSCRIPT printers before starting the
     spooler daemon during a boot, starting the daemon, sleeping for a
     while, and starting all the printers.  This workaround has not
     been tested.

_4.  _F_u_r_t_h_e_r _w_o_r_k _i_s _n_e_e_d_e_d _i_n _t_h_e _f_o_l_l_o_w_i_n_g _a_r_e_a_s:
Please note that this list does not constitute a commitment about the
content of the next TRANSCRIPT release, and that there will probably
be other areas that will be worked on in addition to those listed.
o+    Paper handling.  There are a number of issues here.  The default
     paper size should be configurable, so that European sites can get
     A4 size paper by default.  Multiple paper sizes and multiple
     paper trays should be supported.  Paper orientation (landscape
     vs. portrait) should be supported.  Offsets of the image should
     be supported for both dimensions.
o+    Version 2 of the POSTSCRIPT _C_o_m_m_e_n_t _C_o_n_v_e_n_t_i_o_n_s should be sup-
     ported.
o+    Currently, installing information about new fonts is relatively
     difficult.  There should be a tool for installing font informa-
     tion for _t_r_o_f_f and _d_i_t_r_o_f_f.
o+    Support for the UCB Gremlin _d_i_t_r_o_f_f graphics package.
o+    The installation procedure should be easier to use.  Also, it
     should be more modular, so that if part of the installation goes
     awry, only that part need be repeated.


























                         25 September 1987


