Hello Henrique, 2007/10/8, Henrique Peron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi Bruce, > > today, on FreeDOS, we rely on codepages already encoded into printer's > firmware.
The equivalent to the "BIOS codepages" for DISPLAY (the 437 in DISPLAY CON=(EGA,437,1) > For instance, if I happen to be russian and type a text in russian then > there's no problem since I most likely have a russian printer which is > able to select russian codepages. > > However, what happens if I'm brazilian and I want to print a russian > text in my brazilian printer? There's no cp866 on its firmware. > > There are programs which are able to somehow "upload" a codepage into a > printer's RAM. There are ESC/P commands for that. I've tested a e.g. MS-PRINTER.SYS > shareware program (for Windows) called DOSPRN which does exactly that. The thing is that the program must be able to keep the codepage within the printer, exactly what PRINTER.SYS does (it's not just a question of uploading the codepage within the printer). > It has several codepages in its library. All I have to do is to type a > russian text under DOS, run DOSprn, select codepage 866 on it and send > the text to the printer. It works perfectly. When you SELECT, then the "driver" must just be noticed of that, and change the codepage on demand. E.g. PRINTER.SYS. > A solution like this under FreeDOS would be perfect because it would > override printer firmware limitations which are generally based on > geography. My Epson Stylus Color 740 inkjet printer certainly does not > have eastern european codepages in its firmware; on the other hand, most > likely the very same printer sold on the russian market does not have, > let's say, maltese codepage 853 or baltic codepage 775. The problem is that this involves two things: - The code to be sent to the printer to perform the change. For whoever wants to do this, please contact me, as can be easily contributed to DISPLAY, and compile it into a FD-PRINTER.SYS - The codepages themselves (CPI/CPX files) with the data. > Another important point for this need is that I devised several > codepages for FreeDOS to assist several languages never previously > assisted by any DOS-like OS which, being my creation, are therefore > available on no printer's firmware. The idea is to be able to "send" > these codepages to a printer as well. Unfortunately, all the codepages (CPI/CPX files) that you have created have an indicator inside them that they are for DISPLAY only (and not for PRINTER). And that is because the way in which you insert a codepage into a printer is different from the way you insert it into a graphic adapter. For printers, you may have to embedd certain commands, and the CPI/CPX files that you've created are most likely not valid for printers (even if we had some printer-specific code). Perhaps you can use program similar to yours to create PRINTER-SPECIFIC (and not DISPLAY specific) CPI/CPX files. > I've read a lot about ESC/P and ESC/P2 commands to know that this could > be accomplished on several printers; I know that there are some printers > who doesn't apply to that but many FreeDOS users would already be assisted. ANd whoever tries this, I would please ask to contribute it for the FD-DISPLAY project, so that we have a FD-PRINTER.SYS too. Aitor ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
