On 25 Nov 2004 at 20:44, Rich Mellor wrote: > > The trouble is locating them - if these printers are so readily available > at low prices, then what exactly are we developing this for as the QL can > already output PCL 3 (just not the later versions).
Well all I (innocently) did to get this started was to write an ASCII to PROfoma transformer... I stil think that the mian printing should be done from PROforma, after all Joachim did a great job there! > Easiest thing is to print a test page from Quill as it includes some codes > at the start which also need to be ignored > > ESC @ - reset printer > ESC C n - set page length in lines > CHR$(13) - Carriage Return > CHR$(10) - Line Feed > CHR$(12) - Form Feed > ESC R n - Select international character set - used to translate � symbol > (n=0 is USA, n=3 is UK) > ESC E - Bold on > ESC F - Bold off > ESC 4 - Italics on > ESC 5 - Italics off > ESC - n - Underline on / off (n=1,49 ON or 0,48 OFF) > ESC S 0 and ESC S 48 - Superscript on > ESC S 1 and ESC S 49 - Subscript on > ESC T - turn off subscript / superscript > OK, I'll see what I can do. > Those are probably the main ones from memory - the translates are the > problem areas. (...) > If only all programs could output to a file - certainly accounts programs > do not allow you to do this - as this is part of the security - prevents > you from altering the reports by hand. OK, hence the PFF driver... > Yes lol !! Chances are however, they will forget to launch the second > print spooler program. OK. I've been thinking about that a few days now, and the only thing I can come up with to avoid that is that you have some kind of background job that is suspended until....(either a byte is set in a thing or a byte is present in a pipe etc...) Of course, the job only needs to come up every x seconds. This is feasable. I find this scheme intellectually unsatisfying, though, since it seems wasteful to me as you will have a job querying th byte/channel/whatever periodically, thus eating up resources (memory -the job is loaded, time - the job runs) But I have been unable to think of something better. Anbody ? > > Yes but why should the QL be limited like this - it is much easier if you > can add a job to a print queue and close the current program you are using. Ok, so now we aren't talking about a printer conversion, but about print spooling/queuing etc A whole new ballgame (...) > > > > What if this punter wants to print 1000 files at the same time to 1000 > > different printers hanging off a super USB interface, some of which use > > Epson > > emulation, some others Postscript, yet others GDI and whatnot? Do we > > care if > > he can't do that? > > Not that hypothetical - if the user is using a complicated filter (eg. > convert to postscript), then they could be waiting a while, without > actually knowing what is going on in the background as there is no > reassuring noise of the printer running. You're pleading my case here - if they then initiated the printing via a separate print job, that could keep them informed... (...) > I have no idea how easy it is to pass a PIC file to Proforma - Joachim?? No it isn't olny that. Until now, we've been talking text conversion programs. No you're mixing (?) text & graphices. This is a different league. (...) > > Yes this would be easier IF the user has enough memory to hold the > document in a pipe.... Remember we want to aim this at the lowest common > denominator. No we don't. We need somebody with a machine big enough to run Proforma, PTR_GEN (for things) etc. At least a Gold Card, I'd say. (...) Wolfgang ---------------------------------------- www.scp-paulet-lenerz.com _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
