Thomka.es@XEROX.ARPA (08/01/84)
Recently I have upgraded my Spies (pronounced speez) Printer Interface
Card. It has also been renamed from the Spies SuperMX Card to the Spies
NicePrint Card. I do not sell this card, I do not make any money at all
from Spies. the only reason I am mentioning this product because I
think it is a real nice item, and I think it should be known of.
If you are unfamiliar with it let me explain the two basic advantages
with the NicePrint Card:
1) there are graphics dump routines on it (ala Grappler Plus).
2) There are higher quality printing fonts built in (on ROM) on the
card.
To explain a little further:
The "Grappler" functions are where you have a HiRes picture already in
either Page1 or Page2 of Apple HiRes memory. You then issue a command
(either via direct keyboard entry or through a command line in some
program you are running). The commands are identical to the Grappler
Plus, in that ^IG (ctrl-I followed immediately by a G) are the lead-in
to the graphic dumps. There are other further commands that you can
add, in any order, after the ^IG. Such as
D to Double the picture size,
I to Invert the black/white to be printed as white/black,
R to Rotate the printed picture 90 clockwise,
2 to print hires page2 area (instead of the default page1 area),
S to print page1 and page2 hires areas Side-by-side,
E to Emphasize (darken) the print output,
L to print th picture along the previously set Left margin, and finally
M to print the Mix of the picture and the bottom four lines of text.
The other major advantage of the Spies NicePrint Card is the ability to
print higher defined fonts. These, in no way, take anything away from
the already provided fonts that come with the printer. They only add to
them! Higher defined fonts are where instead of only being able to
print with Epson's (in my case I have an Epson MX-80) 9x9 defined font,
now I also have the ability to print with Spies' 12x16 defined font(s).
How this is acomplished is that Spies puts the printer into a bit image
mode and prints his characters out of a ROM font that is on the
NicePrint Interface card. All this is invisible to you, though, you
don't have to know anything at all of how he does it, just sit back and
enjoy the advantage of a much higher quality print output. Because of
the empty sockets on the NicePrint Card, there is more room for
additional fonts too. right now the standard font supplied with the
card is a Roman typeface. The optional (at extra cost) fonts are Script
(sort of like hand writing), Old English, Letter Gothic (a modern clean
style), and Orator Large (a noticibly taller, larger modern typeface
that is easier to read at slighty further distances).
A lot of this was explained in some prior message. The reason for this
message was to bring up the latest revisions to the card, and there are
some major ones.
First, now the card will work with a lot of different printers. There
are some switches located on the card to set up for the selection. The
printers that Spies says will work it are (all dot matrix printers, of
course) the NEC, the CItoh, the Leading Edge, the Gemini, the Panasonic
and the Okidata (but the Oki needs the "Plug&Play" ROMs available at
most Oki dealers).
Next, where the old version only gave you two choices in print styles
(Pica at 10 cpi ((characters per inch)), and Elite at 12 cpi) now there
is additionally:
Condensed at 17 cpi, and also a Large (double width) which then doubles
the 10cpi, 12cpi and 17cpi sizes to 5cpi, 6cpi and 8.5cpi respectively.
There is also Italics, SuperScript, Subscript, Underlined and
Emphasized. Notice, that that is all of the available print modes (at
least in my Epson) used in the usual printer fonts (the ones the printer
manufacturer provided). Now you can do the identical things with the
Spies fonts!
Standard with the Niceprint Card is an additional font (called Special
Font) where some math symbols, greek letters and other notations are
provided. For example there are various size circles, bullets, and
boxes, there are the four directions of arrowheads, the "cents" sign,
the plus/minus, the divide sign, paragraph symbol, a section sign, the
"TM" a small trademark (prints as one character), even a small c inside
of a circle for "copyright" and a small r inside of a circle for
"registered". There are 54 characters in all.
Now the Epson functions (condensed, underline, italics, etc.) and the
Spies functions can all be selected from the off-line mode. That is,
suppose you already have a file that you do not want to have to change
just to use some of the special functions of the printer. You don't
have to! All you have to do is first put the printer to off-line (or
put it off-line when ever you want to, prior to enabling the function),
start the printing of the file, since the printer is off-line the
Nicecard will "see" that and tell you so by "boop"ing (a lower frequency
beep) the Apple speaker. Then simply press a corresponding keyboard
character to enable whatever feature you want. For example if you want
italics printing press the i (or I) key. Then put the printer back
on-line and start printing in the new mode. What is really interesting
is that the Spies off-line mode selection will work for the usual
printer modes or with the Spies NicePrint fonts. No longer do you have
to remember ESC 4 (with the Epson) to turn on the Italics, or ^O to turn
on the condensed, etc. Of course, the Epson commands still work, and
they'll still be passed through the interface so as to enable the
printer, so modifications do not have to be made to your existing files.
[What all of this is similar to is another product you might have seen,
that is the "FingerPrint" made by Dresselhaus. That is a small card
that
fits in you printer so as to allow you to enable certain printer
functions
via the printer's control panel. (And I have and like the FingerPrint,
too!) But with the Spies Niceprint you get similar functions, but from
the
Apple keyboard. No longer do you have to count beeps (as with the
FingerPrint) to know what mode you are about to change.]
Now there are separate keys for each function. It doesn't matter is you
type upper or lowercase characters either, both will work.]
P for Pica (10cpi)
E for Elite (12cpi, my Epson MX-80 will ignore this since it doesn't
have 12cpi)
C for Condensed (17cpi)
L for Large (double-width)
M to cancel Large
I for Italics
J to cancel italics
D for bolDface (emphasized)
Z to cancel boldface
R for supeRscript
S for Subscript
T to Terminate super or subscript
U for Underline
V to cancel underline.
H to go to the High quality NicePrint fonts (where all of the above
still work, too)
N to go back to Normal printer fonts
Then there is also the
K to Kill the printing (that is to just dump the remainder of yet to be
printed and get back to the program). This can sometimes be very handy
when you are in the middle of a large printout and you realize that you
really don't want it after all.
Along with being able to keypress those commands in at the off-line
time, you could also put them into your file to be printed and they'll
work there too.
So how do you distinguish between a command and just regular text?
Simply prefix any command with a NicePrint control character. That
control character defaults to the @ character. But FIRST you have to
enable the @ commands with either:
1) putting the two characters @^ in the file or
2) having the printer off-line while trying to print ("boop") and then
pressing the @ sign. Then put the printer back on-line.
What if you want to print an @ sign? Simple, just put two of them (@@)
in your file.
What if you think that is a lousy solution (entering @@ to print one @)?
Simple, just make any other character (any ASCII character less than $40
(64 decimal) (($40 is the @) can be the control character. so, either:
1) in your file, after putting the required @^ to enable the Spies
command just follow at any place, prior to the use of the command, with
@#, for example to use the # sign. Or how about a @ctrl-Z. Such as
@^@ctrl-Z; or
2) having the printer off-line while trying to print ("boop") and then
pressing any character you'd rather have. Like the # sign or the
ctrl-Z, whatever.
There are still the same commands now as before to do all kinds or
things, like many (but not all) other printer interfaces too. Like
Making the video shut off while printing, (the usual ctrl-I80N for
example).
Disabling the line feeds after every carrage return.
Enabling the printer's "bell" to sound.
Enabling the 8 bit ASCII data to go to the printer (versus just 7 bits).
Setting up a left margin.
Setting up a right margin.
Setting up a page length (so many lines) before doing 6 lines of skip.
Being able to send any ASCII character $00 to $FF (0 to 255 decimal) to
the printer with no problems (usually most printer interfaces will strip
out ASCII 9 and $A (10).
There is no buffer available for the card. But external (in-line or
in-printer) buffers will work just fine with it. I don't have a buffer,
myself. I've had a printer connected to my Apple now for about 4 years
and I have yet to really need a buffer anyway. Typically, I only work
on one thing at a time anyway. So if I'm printing I'm waiting for the
printout before I can continue anyway. And if I'm editing something I
really would't want the printer buzzing in my ear anyway. But if you
can work that way, you still can use one of those external buffers.
Some of them have some really neat features too. And that would really
be the hot setup anyway.
So what does all this cost? The retail price of the Spies NicePrint
(with the mentioned graphics function, the Roman font, and the Special
font - that is everything except for the additional fonts (Script, Old
English, etc)) is still the same at $175 (the same retail price as the
Grapple Plus) and it is available through the maker:
Spies Laboratories
PO Box 336
Lawndale, Ca. 90260
(213) 538-8166