gv -portrait -media 36x72 -scale -8 36x72HP.ps
The gv display is
Scientific meetings consist of oral presentations, but even more ofter, poster presentations. In the United States the presenter is give a 4' x 8' (approx 1 meter x 2 meter ) presentation area. As wide bed plotters become less expensive, large posters are just unrolled, and tacked to the presentation panel.
This example shows how to use EPS inclusion feature of groff to make a large format poster. The example also shows how to use gv-GhostView previewer to view the large format on a *NIX display.
The individual included files are not included, even though the font.trf does create a single page that can be used.
The following files are required in the working directory:
| DOIT | UNIX Shell script that does everything |
| font.trf | Groff font sampler |
| npspic | Extension to groff tmac.pspic macros to introduce a .PSPIL and .PSPIR operator. These permit changing the aspect ratio of the image. |
To create the poster just enter
DOIT
the script will create two PostScript files:
36x72HP.ps - The PostScript for the large format printer
preview.ps - The large format poster on letter for preview
The preview.ps is useful since researchers often have reproductions of their paper on smaller format paper for distribution.
The preview: (The grid of lines is in the DOIT shell script for the purpose of relating the alignment to the ElabelXY and MLabelXY positioning command with in the DOIT shell script). The preview places light gray border around the image and also places the date at the bottom of the figure.
To prevent wasting paper and inks, Ghostview is used to preview the groff output. However, to show a large poster on a small computer screen, the image must be able to be reduced a lot. The following changes to the .gv initialization will change the menu to permit this reduction.
Edit the .gv file in your login directory. The changes made will then appear when you click on the media or scale button at the top of the gv display. The extracts below highlight the changes in red:
GV.scales: Natural size, 1.000, screen\n\
Pixel based, 1.000, pixel\n\
0.015, 0.015\n\
0.020, 0.020\n\
0.025, 0.025\n\
0.050, 0.050\n\
0.100, 0.100\n\
0.125, 0.125\n\
0.250, 0.250\n\
.............................
8.000, 8.000\n\
10.00, 10.00
GV.medias: Letter, 612 792\n\
# LetterSmall, 612 792\n\
Legal, 612 1008\n\
Statement, 396 612\n\
Tabloid, 792 1224\n\
36x72, 2592 5184\n\
72x36, 5184 2592\n\
Ledger, 1224 792\n\HP
Folio, 612 936\n\
.............................
One can use the gv menu or invoke it from the command line using:
gv -portrait -media 36x72 -scale -8 36x72HP.ps
The gv display is
This is done by replacing the lines
%%EndProlog %%Page: 1 1
by
%%EndProlog %%BeginSetup %%BeginFeature: *PageRegion Letter <</PageSize [ 2592 5184 ] /ImagingBBox null>> setpagedevice %%EndFeature %%EndSetup %%Page: 1 1
Note that the [ 2592 5184 ] values are derived by the desired size of the final image, e.g., 2592 * 36 * 72 and 5184 = 72 * 72
For other output sizes, adjust the units accordingly
Final Caution. The HP2500CP reserves a non-printing area for margins. This it may be safest to design the 36x72 poster assuming 1" margins
Last Update on March 9, 2000