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scruss | 4 years ago

You can still make many HP and compatible laser printers speak HP-GL (well, HP-GL/2) through some arcane PJL commands.

Fun fact: HP-GL is equally compatible with metric and US customary measure as it uses 1/40 mm as its base unit. This just happens to be 1/1016 inches: not a tremendously useful integer factor, but every bit of integer goodness mattered back when peripherals were 8-bit.

discuss

rbanffy|4 years ago

> Fun fact: HP-GL is equally compatible with metric and US customary measure as it uses 1/40 mm as its base unit. This just happens to be 1/1016 inches

That’s a brilliant hack.

Gibbon1|4 years ago

Reminds me of a high precision delta-sigma ADC I saw that had nulls at 60 and 50 HZ.

emmelaich|4 years ago

> This just happens to be

The inch is defined as 2.54 cm, since 1959. You might know this, just thought I'd add this note.

scruss|4 years ago

and you guys finally got rid of the US survey foot - the bane of this Canadian's existence when working on big civil jobs in the states. We'll get you guys using proper units afore long