Convert .hpgl or .plt files to .hita files for use with 1980's Hitachi or Roland plotters
Project hpgl2hita created 2020 in order to get my Hitachi 671-29 6 pen plotter going after 35 years of collecting dust. There were two main issues:
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Parallel and RS-232 interface Solved in my case, with an old Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop with both interfaces. This laptop is running Linux Ubuntu 10.04.
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The Roland style command set DXY Many modern programs can create HPGL plotter files. Therefore I created a compiler for HPGL to Hitachi's DXY format.
Although everything is done using Linux, I believe it will be easy to configure for Windows and Mac.
The compiler hpgl2hita.php assumes you have PHP CLI installed. Make it executable: $ chmod a+x hpgl2hita.php Depending on how you prefer to work, you could create a link like this: $ cd /usr/local/bin $ sudo ln -s /home/path/to/hpgl2hita.php hpgl2hita See source for more information
The C-program cpy2lp0.c assumes you have gcc installed. Compile it and use it for sending your compiled plotter files to your plotter. For example: $ cpy2lp0 myfile.hita You could move the cpy2lp0 to an execute path like: $ sudo mv cpy2lp0 /usr/local/bin and thereby have easier access to it from anywhere. See the source for more information.
All the best good luck Carl Friis-Hansen