[comp.sys.ibm.pc] PRN2FILE and balky graphics screens

djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor) (03/07/89)

At the advice of some forgotten soul, I grabbed a copy of PRN2FILE from
SIMTEL20 and tried it out on a Zenith Z159 (XT clone) with EGA.  It works
fine on some things, but not in the one situation I need...

I've been trying to dump graphics screens from certain programs like PC
Tools Deluxe using Shift-PrtScr.  The special graphics characters print
on my Epson printer like vertical bars and other boring equivalents.  I've
got a menuing system which is nothing more than a .BAT file which sends
those nice box-drawing characters to the screen, and Shift-PrtScr sends them
to the printer just as I see them on the screen.  Another thing is that with
PRN2FILE installed, everything I dump with Shift-PrtScr gets intercepted 
*except* screens from PC Tools applications (like PC Shell).  I loaded
PRN2FILE last, and it *still* gets bypassed somehow.

How does this happen?  Doesn't PRN2FILE redirect all output sent to PRN to
the specified disk file?  How can Shift-PrtScr calls get intercepted 
sometimes and not others?    And what is it about certain graphics screens
that they get their special characters converted on the way to the printer?


Dick O'Connor
Washington Department of Fisheries
Olympia, Washington  98504
Internet Mail: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu
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DISCLAIMER:  I speak only for myself, not for the Department.  Here, anyway!
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