On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Paul Cull wrote:
> Does anyone know where I can get a DOS compatible downloadable font for
> Epson graphics (LX-400) printer?
It might be worth the trouble having a look at FXMatrix, a "Character
design program for the Epson family of 9 pin printers". You can find it
at:
http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/DOS/102/6.html
I once tried its counterpart for Epson 24-pin matrix printers and
compatibles (on a Canon BJ-10sx), LQMatrix (written by J. David Sapir),
and found that program quite useful. You could design your own fonts
rather easily, and it came with several ready-made fonts. With some
work I managed to integrate these new fonts into the font-menus, for
easy selection, of my word processor, Word Perfect 5.0.
> What I need is to be able to use the
> international code page (850) extended graphics characters, so I guess I'm
> looking for something that can download into the printer and provide me
> these characters.
My Canon printer, which can emulate Epson LQ-510, has two Epson
"Character Sets" - "Italics" and "Graphics". The Epson Graphics
Character Set is more or less identical to IBM Codepage 437. If I'm to
judge from my printer's manual, Epson LQ-510 has no codepage/character
set similar to IBM's codepage 850. Instead it has something called
"Epson International Character Sets". If one of these is activated (by
DIP switches, or control code commands) some of the normal ASCII
characters are replaced by the "international characters". The code
positions which will contain these "international characters" are 35,
36, 64, 91-94, 96 and 123-126, which means the following characters
will be replaced: #$@[\]^`{|}~
If you design your own font with a program like FXMatrix and download
it to your printer, you can assign any kind of character or symbol to
any code position.
> I'm using DR-DOS 7.03 which has codepage support for printers, but
> doesn't have a driver which works with my printers.
The printer driver is usually supplied with the application program in
DOS, not with the operating system. However, DR-DOS has something
called "Printer.sys" which is supposed to give support for code page
switching to some printers, including Epson FX 850 and compatibles.
What kind of "code page switching" the Epson FX 850 is capable of I'm
not sure. The printer driver accompanying an application contains
support for all printer-specific formatting commands, so you usually
don't have to worry about all those esoteric control codes.
Lars-Einar Jansson
Stockholm, Sweden
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