bill@unixland.uucp (Bill Heiser) (11/20/90)
Many thanks to Jim Chandler who came up with the following
solution to the problem of trying to print from WordPerfect 5.1
under VP/ix on an Esix system!
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From: world.std.com!uunet!auspex!sunburn.West!beagle!Jim.Chandler
I have successfully gotten this to work with some minor workarounds. First,
I am using ESIX Rev. D, WP 5.1 and VPIX 1.2. I first created a directory to
use as a virtual d drive, on my system /usr/chandler/vpix/wp51. Next I used
edlin to edit my autoexec.bat file and I included the following line:
dosmount d:/usr/chandler/vpix/wp51
This will supply you with a drive called D: whose files will actually be
located in /usr/chandler/vpix/wp51. Next install WP5.1 to D:. You should
have no problem from here on out except that printing is useless, so here
is workaround number two. Go into the printer menu Shift F7. Now edit the
printer that you are using so that it prints to a file. On my system
D:\text\output.prn. Now when you print something it goes to this file. If you
print something else it will overwrite it. A small (LARGE??) inconvience.
After it is done printing, I copy the output file to /dev/lp1 and it works
great.
Jim Chandler
asuvax!xroads!beagle!chandler
chandler@beagle.uucp
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Bill Heiser
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other: heiser@world.std.com Public Access Unix (617) 739-9753richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (11/22/90)
> [...] Go into the printer menu Shift F7. Now edit the >printer that you are using so that it prints to a file. On my system >D:\text\output.prn. Now when you print something it goes to this file. If you >print something else it will overwrite it. A small (LARGE??) inconvience. >After it is done printing, I copy the output file to /dev/lp1 and it works >great. Why not make output.prn be a named pipe on the Unix side (mknod output.prn p). And then use a simple script to connect to the spooler: while : do cat .../output.prn | lp done I'm not sure if that will work with Wordperfect, but it worked on a simple test that I just tried. Fixes the overwrite problem. -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
bill@camco.Celestial.COM (Bill Campbell) (11/24/90)
In <1990Nov22.034419.28778@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes:
:> [...] Go into the printer menu Shift F7. Now edit the
:>printer that you are using so that it prints to a file. On my system
:>D:\text\output.prn. Now when you print something it goes to this file. If you
:>print something else it will overwrite it. A small (LARGE??) inconvience.
:>After it is done printing, I copy the output file to /dev/lp1 and it works
:>great.
:Why not make output.prn be a named pipe on the Unix side (mknod output.prn p).
:And then use a simple script to connect to the spooler:
: while :
: do
: cat .../output.prn | lp
: done
:I'm not sure if that will work with Wordperfect, but it worked on a simple
:test that I just tried. Fixes the overwrite problem.
This should work, but with one caveat. Once DOS programs start
to write, they don't close the file! This means you have to have
a timer in the program that reads the named pipe that will close
the output to lp when nothing has come over the pipe for a while.
This is the same problem that makes it so much fun to have a
reliable print spooler on a LAN.
:--
:Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
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INTERNET: bill@Celestial.COM Bill Campbell; Celestial Software
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uunet!camco!bill Mercer Island, WA 98040; (206) 947-5591bill@unixland.uucp (Bill Heiser) (11/26/90)
In article <1990Nov22.034419.28778@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: > >Why not make output.prn be a named pipe on the Unix side (mknod output.prn p). >And then use a simple script to connect to the spooler: > As someone pointed out to me, the actual solution is to mknod a output.prn to mimick /dev/lp1. -- home: ...!{uunet,bloom-beacon,esegue}!world!unixland!bill bill@unixland.uucp, bill%unixland.uucp@world.std.com Public Access Unix - Esix SYSVR3 - (508) 655-3848 other: heiser@world.std.com Public Access Unix (617) 739-9753