earleh@dartvax.UUCP (Earle R. Horton) (09/08/87)
I have finally managed to create a working "Printer Resource File" so that I can print directly from WriteNow to either my Tandy DMP-110 or my Silver-Reed Penman Deluxe typewriter-printer. It should work with any printer which satisfies certain minimal requirements which I will give below. It should also work with any properly written Macintosh application which prints text. I am looking for adventurous types who want to test it for me. First, the requirements your printer must satisfy. Second, the conditions for distribution. This is a fully formed "Printer Resource File" according to the specifications in the PhoneBook version of IM and Technical Note 95. It interacts with applications via the standard "Page Setup" and "Print..." dialogs. In addition, when installing the driver using "Chooser" a dialog box is available to set baud rate and control strings for the printer. When you use the Chooser, you can tell the driver what the printer uses for linefeed, formfeed, initialization, beginning of page, and end of file. You can also tell it to use either CTS or Xon/Xoff flow control. It should work with your printer if all of the following are true: a) An ASCII character sequence is used to advance the paper by one line. b) A page can be ejected, either by ASCII sequence or by you cranking out the page by hand. c) The printer is capable of either CTS or Xon-Xoff flow control or a low baud rate. d) The printer can be configured to print ASCII characters as sent (i.e. Printer receives 'A', prints 'A' on the paper.) The printing code assumes a non-proportional font, and six lines per inch. In the "Page Setup" dialog you specify 10, 12, or 15 characters per inch, and the driver communicates this to the Font Manager, so that word processors know roughly how many characters they can print on a line. Best results are obtained when the entire document is formatted in one mono-spaced font, no stylistic variations, although the output is certainly readable otherwise. I can obtain letter quality results from WriteNow using my Silver-Reed, but have not tested it extensively with other word processors. Margins can be changed from within the word processor, within limits. The printing code uses a standard 'PREC' resource to determine page size, so if you are really adventurous you can tinker with this using a resource editor. The printer driver works with my 1 Meg "512ke" running System 4.1. I have not tested it on any other machines. It requires about 30k of memory for the printing code's use, since it buffers up a page in RAM before sending it to the printer. It hasn't given me "la bombe" in at least two days. The conditions for distribution are simple. You send me email requesting a copy. I send you a binhex of the printer driver. After a month, you send me by email a report of your experiences, including a summary of what programs you used it with, what kind of printer you have, and what (if any) bugs you would care to report. Those who send interesting or valuable reports will receive the debugged, enhanced, or whatever "final" version. Since I would like to have all the reports in by Christmas, this offer expires November 15. -- ********************************************************************* *Earle R. Horton, H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 * *********************************************************************