ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK) (07/12/90)
Wed 11-Jul-90: I have specialized programs for printing text files to three printers, which I use myself. These are the Dicionix Inkjet Parallel Printer Model 150, Daisy Bubble Jet parallel printer, and Gabriele 8008 daisywheel serial typewriter. I have also two programs with pull-down menus for setting the Diconix and the Daisy. These programs are contained in /pc/ts/tsprn15.arc update. What I've done is to have introduced line editing potential into user interfaces, added controlled ctrl-c and break interrupting, and made the off-line response times from the printers much quicker. Without speeding them up, the off-line response times can be annoying long depending on your hardware. You can use these programs on any PC for these printers, but originally the Diconix program was developed for a Zenith Z-181 laptop, and hence the information file contains some special advice for Z-181 users. The are two pulldown menu driven programs (setdico and setdaisy) for convenient setting of the Diconix and Daisy printers. And next on a more technical note. Originally, one of the reasons (besides wanting to be able to set these printers easily) I wrote these these programs to try pulldown menu programming in Turbo Pascal. One feature of many such programs is the ability to exit to a Dos shell, and I included this feature. One of the problems with a Dos shell is that it is easy to forget being in a shell and needing to type exit. (If you don't do that you may run out of memory.) Now SemWares QEdit has a nice trick to remind you of being in the shell. It adds [QE] to the prompt while in the shell. What I've done in the new release is to program (the inevitable) [TS] addendum to the shell prompt. This turned out to be quite a challenging piece of programming, and the logic is much due to a PD code by Ron Cravis published in a Turbo Pascal FidoNet conference from Rivendell TAP/1 (1:260/340). TSPRN15.ARC Print text files by Timo Salmi Filename Comment Date Time CRC -------- -------------------------------- ---- ---- --- PRNDAISY.EXE Daisy Bubble parallel Jet 07-10-90 22:34:46 A2A0 PRNDICO.EXE Diconix parallel ink jets 07-10-90 22:27:34 E888 PRNG8008.EXE Gabriele 8008 serial daisy-wheel 07-10-90 22:40:04 BED6 SETDAISY.EXE Set Daisy Bubble Jet from menu 07-11-90 22:23:28 7876 SETDICO.EXE Set Diconix InkJet from menu 07-11-90 22:23:32 1E6A TSPRN.INF Document 07-11-90 23:50:00 7E44 TSPRN.NWS News announcements about tsprn 07-11-90 22:46:42 313B TSPROG.INF List of PD programs from T.Salmi 04-03-90 17:37:40 38AB VAASA.INF Info: Finland, Vaasa, U of Vaasa 02-02-90 11:52:54 F6C0 ---- ------ ------ ----- 0009 175714 122275 31% ................................................................... Prof. Timo Salmi (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3) School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun