hallvard@immhp3.marina.unit.no (Hallvard Paulsen) (05/06/91)
Hello all netters. This is my fist posting hope it works! I just got myself a nice home computer. 386 -25 Mhz 256 kb Cache. Since my wife who doesn't like computers very much shold also use it I desided to try using windows as mush as posible. The printer I've got is a STAR LC 24-200 Colour which is Epson LQ 860 compatible. I have no problem printing colors from any DOS program with epson divers, but win3 doesn't work. The printer I have selected is Epson LQ 2550 (It is the onely 24-pin Epson with color option) and i get color output from WfW. In the examples that come with WfW there are som docs including color graphics (and they work), but if I try to read HPGL files into WfW I only get BW. Also Paintbrush is not able to print anything but BW. Am I doing something wrong or is there a limitation in windows to only BW printing? In that case at least Paintbrush is more or less useless. (Paint prog. unables to print color !!!) Hallvard Paulsen Grad Stud Inst. for Marint Maskineri 7035 Trondheim Norway
robertt@hp-vcd.HP.COM (Bob Taylor) (05/07/91)
Your problem is the printer driver. The Epson driver doesn't support DIBs (Device Independent Bitmaps), which are required by many apps. for color support (including PaintBrush). There are only a couple of drivers out there that support color DIBs (e.g. HP PaintJet). I don't know of any Dot Matrix drivers that do. bob taylor HP Vancouver
tj@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Terry Jones) (05/08/91)
>Your problem is the printer driver. The Epson driver doesn't support >DIBs (Device Independent Bitmaps), which are required by many apps. for This brings up two questions... The original post indicated that he had gotten some WfW stuff in colour from his Epson. I presume that this would have to have been not bitmap stuff then, and if so, what exactly is non bitmap? Text? Is ATM text not bitmaps? Is Windows text not bitmaps? Maybe only the printers builtin fonts will print in colour. I will experiment at home cause I have a colour epson. I have to admit that as soon as I found that paintbrush wouldn't do colour on the printer I sort of stopped trying, but Corel Draw did colour on it... hmmmm... more experiments. The next question is, is it that hard to impliment DIBS that these major players can't add the support to the drivers? HP did it. PostScript drivers do it (almost trivial there I guess) Doesn anybody know of ANY other printer drivers for WIndows that support colour DIBS? thanks. Bob, the first few lines look like an attack on what you said, they aren't, I just want to know the differences etc. Sorry it sounds that way.
robertt@hp-vcd.HP.COM (Bob Taylor) (05/08/91)
th@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca writes: > This brings up two questions... > The original post indicated that he had gotten some WfW stuff in colour > from his Epson. I presume that this would have to have been not bitmap > stuff then, and if so, what exactly is non bitmap? Text? Is ATM text not > bitmaps? Is Windows text not bitmaps? Maybe only the printers builtin > fonts will print in colour. I will experiment at home cause I have a > colour epson. I have to admit that as soon as I found that paintbrush > wouldn't do colour on the printer I sort of stopped trying, but > Corel Draw did colour on it... hmmmm... more experiments. This is a broad generalization that covers most (but not all) Windows printer drivers: Data can come to the printer in any of several forms: Text: The driver then either sends a command to the printer to print the text or creates a bitmap of the text and sends that to the printer. (note that this is for printer fonts only, not ATM) Bitmaps: Although Windows "defines" bitmaps as very general, in practice they are implemented as only having one plane/one bit per pixel (in other words, it is a monochrome bit map). This can have a color attached to it and this is how ATM works - it passes a monochrome bitmap and says "print this in Red". Output: This is a command that handles general graphics - lines, pixels, arcs, etc. (although, for most printers, only pixels and scanlines are supported - GDI breaks all other objects down for these devices) Each of these objects can be drawn with a color pen or brush, so Color is no problem here (e.g., CorelDraw). DIBs: DIBs were new for Windows 3.0, so many printer drivers haven't added support for them. If the driver doesn't support them, the image is sent down as a standard monochrome bitmap. > The next question is, is it that hard to impiment DIBS that these major > players can't add the support to the drivers? It isn't trivial to add DIB support, but it isn't a huge effort, either. The problem is that most printer mfgr.s don't write their own drivers - HP does, but Microsoft writes the drivers for most other printers, so the manufacturer may not have that much control. > Does anybody know of ANY other printer drivers for WIndows that support > colour DIBS? Most of the HP drivers (current revisions, anyway) do, as does the Postscript driver and any drivers based on Microsofts generic driver (e.g. Canon BJ-10e). Most dot matrix drivers and SuperPrint (at least version 1.0) do not. > thanks. > > Bob, the first few lines look like an attack on what you said, they > aren't, I just want to know the differences etc. Sorry it sounds that way. no offense taken - I know how frustrating and confusing printing in Windows can be. p.s. - the above characterization of Windows printing is !extremely! trivialized in order to answer the question at hand. bob taylor HP Vancouver
chryses@xurilka.UUCP (Phong Co) (05/09/91)
On May 7, tj@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Terry Jones) wrote: >colour epson. I have to admit that as soon as I found that paintbrush >wouldn't do colour on the printer I sort of stopped trying, but >Corel Draw did colour on it... hmmmm... more experiments. >Doesn anybody know of ANY other printer drivers for WIndows that support >colour DIBS? I've got the Sharp JX-730 Color InkJet printer, with a Win3 driver. The first version of the driver would cause an UAE whenever I started an application which could print. It was also over 500KB! The next version I got was down to about 200KB. It works OK, I got PaintBrush to print out some .BMP files in color without much trouble. CorelDraw came out pretty good too, although you can probably get better results if you specify a PostScript printer and save the output in a file, then sending it through a PostScript interpreter. I use Freedom of Press, which also supports the JX-730. Just a curiosity, since I never tried it: what happens if you try to print a color file (ie., from Corel or PaintBrush) to a B/W dot-matrix? To an HP LaserJet? Phong. -- ========================================================================= Phong T. Co | chryses@xurilka.UUCP | Nice girls don't explode. dada Indugu Inc. | -- Dave Sim (Cerebus #110) Montreal, CANADA |
hallvard@immhp3.marina.unit.no (Hallvard Paulsen) (05/09/91)
In article <920010@hp-vcd.HP.COM>, robertt@hp-vcd.HP.COM (Bob Taylor) writes: Stuff deleted |> |> > Does anybody know of ANY other printer drivers for WIndows that support |> > colour DIBS? |> |> Most of the HP drivers (current revisions, anyway) do, as does the Postscript |> driver and any drivers based on Microsofts generic driver (e.g. Canon BJ-10e). |> Most dot matrix drivers and SuperPrint (at least version 1.0) do not. |> More stuff deleted |> |> bob taylor |> HP Vancouver Does this mean that given a printer utility making an Epson colorprinter emulate eighter a color Postscrip or a HP-Paintjet one could be able to get color output. (I'll descibe how it might be done (theoreticaly)) 1. Install HP-Paintjet (or color Postscipt) as your windows printer. 2. Printing to file (instead of LPTx). 3. Using the earlier mentioned utility to print out the resulting file. If this would work is there an HP-paintjet/color Postscript emulator program for Epson 24-pin colorprinters (or in my case STAR LC 24-200 color) anywhere?? Hallvard Paulsen PS I know HP makes superior stuff. But the price for home use is kind of steep. At work we have HP 300/800/700 workstations and LaserJet II/III printers + plotters. DS