Hi, I have some sources for graphical printing onto Epson FX-80 compatible printers and and for converting fonts to/from binary representation for this program. While there is no distinctive license present, it seems like phrase "these sources can be freely used and modified" puts it into public domain. Also there is much more powerful program, that was widely used while dot-matrix printing was still actual. It shows full preview of what going to be printed, allows you to print in graphics for quality and different fonts styles and sizes or to upload fonts in printer for faster printing, if printer support it, break text into pages, auto-numerate pages and there is even more useful features. But there is no license or even mention of terms of use at all. And what is worse, there is no sources for it. If you interested, I can send you both, as they can be evaluated even without printer, but be prepared for comments in sources, documentation and interface all in Russian.
On 06.05.11 03:09, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Henrique, Bret, > >> interesting to know that there's someone out there, familiar to FreeDOS, >> still using those 9-pin printers. At least here in Brazil they're still >> used on lots of places because of their low operational cost. >> >> Well, Eric and Konstantyn... So much for the museum idea! > > Well... We had a 24 pin printer 20 years ago and I patched some closed > source tools which were hardcoded for a 9 pin printer from 25-30 years > ago to work with that new printer when the old 9 pin broke, so... ;-) > > Anyway, regarding your question and the comment from Bret: I think you > can do quite a bit with ESC/P, HP PCL and PostScript when you stick to > basic feature sets, as those tend to be in the "common denominator" of > things supported by different variants of said printer languages. You > can check the FreeDOS GRAPHICS source codes for the general idea if > you like, Bret :-) > > The short story for printing text as graphics is as follows: You send > some ESC sequence to initiate graphics mode, then you send a header > sequence saying that N columns of pixel data follow and then you send > the pixel data as either 1 or 3 bytes per column (8 or 24 pins used). > > For 24 pins, you can either scale a VGA font, increase margins, or both, > or design a special printer font. I think scaling 8x8 would be a bit > pointless (can just use low quality 8 pin mode then, even 24 pin head > printers support that) so I would either go for 8x16 and leave 8 pins > unused (line spacing and thus papere movement per line of graphics are > adjustable after all) or try to tweak-scale 8x14 to "ca 2 times 8x12". > > For PostScript and HP PCL, the pixel data formats are different, but > you can be very creative with PostScript anyway. Actually uploading > a font might be a good choice for the latter, or turning the font to > some sort of "rendering macro" that you would send as "header" before > the text that you want to be printed. > > As far as I remember, HP PCL pixel data was row oriented, so you send > all pixels for one stripe of paper (e.g. as wide as suitable to print > 80 characters if that is the output style you have in mind) at a time > and the printer itself decides how to pool pixels to avoid having to > move the print head too much. Usually it would flush the pool when a > page gets full or no new data arrives for a certain amount of time. > > Regards, Eric > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > WhatsUp Gold - Download Free Network Management Software > The most intuitive, comprehensive, and cost-effective network > management toolset available today. Delivers lowest initial > acquisition cost and overall TCO of any competing solution. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/whatsupgold-sd > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WhatsUp Gold - Download Free Network Management Software The most intuitive, comprehensive, and cost-effective network management toolset available today. Delivers lowest initial acquisition cost and overall TCO of any competing solution. http://p.sf.net/sfu/whatsupgold-sd _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
