s64421@zeus.usq.EDU.AU (house ron) (03/19/91)
lair@ellis.uchicago.edu (Scott A. Laird) writes: >1) Make a backup copy of your printer's .ALL file. >2) Run the printer editor, PTR.EXE. >3) Copy the definition for your printer, and call it something like > "Epson LQ-850+." (But only if it was an LQ-850 in the first place...) >4) Edit each of the font definitions so the character set only contains > one character, such as [12,255], or any other character that you never > use. This will cause WP to use its own grahpics character set for > all characters. >5) Now return to the main menu, and select, I think, Miscellaneous > Options, or something similar, and select the option (I think) > Scalable fonts. It's been a while, and I don't remember the > exact name, but its close to that. >6) Now save and quit PTR, and run WP. Select the new printer you created, > and you _should_ be able to print text any size you want, with WP > doing the scaling on the fly. The ability of WP to do this has > increased with time, with the early releases of 5.1 crashing with > a full page, or anything over about 100pts, and the later versions > giving me almost 200 or so. >You should now have a nice, cheap (Well, WP isn't cheap, but you already have >that, so it doesn't count) way to print scalable fonts on your printer. If you >have a Postscript printer, it obviously doesn't matter, but this method works >on any printer that WP can print grpahics on. There are a few problems with >this, since small sizes (below 18 points) don't come out well, this isn't >good god for text, but you can use WP to make signs and so on that look far >better than our old friend (or is it enemy?) The Print Shop. >Getting this to work can take some time, and there are a few bugs in the >system, since the graphics character abilities in WP come from the need >to do print preview as much as anything, and aren't really designed to make >huge printer fonts, but it works, if you're careful. >There are only three fonts that WP can do this with, internally. There is a >Times Roman, a Helvetica, and a Courier, with obliques for Helvetica and >Courier, and a real italic on Times. Yep, I did this. Actually, I wrote a complete printer driver for a very ancient ITO 1550 printer. (The modern driver doesn't work.) Although I didn't set scaleable fonts, I should have. But I only wanted a few sizes. DrawPerfect comes with a font file with all sorts of snazzy fonts such as Old English, and is compatible with WordPerfect. My next project, when I get a round tuit, will be to see if I can get them working. Remember if you try this trick, that it will take __AGES__ to print! Restrict yourself to special effects; don't do the whole body text of your next novel this way. -- Regards, Ron House. (s64421@zeus.usq.edu.au) (By post: Info Tech, U.C.S.Q. Toowoomba. Australia. 4350)