Oakland CPM Archive/oakcpm.iso/cpm/list/ep-coms.ark/EP.DOC

Text File | 1988-05-21 | 5.5 KB | 118 lines

{EP} is a program which formats and prints texts on an Epson printer
using proportionally spaced fonts of characters.
The formatting is controlled by commands which are placed in the text.
Many fonts are supplied (around 50), and you can design your own.
The characters of a single font can be modified by being italicized,
underlined, emphasized, enlarged, compressed, etc.
There are limited facilities for horizontal and vertical rules,
macro commands, embedded graphics, and for multiple-column
printing.

However, printing is rather slow.
Although characters can be stretched, only one basic point size can
be used (8 points).
And there are some things you might expect to find in a program of
the ``runoff'' type which are missing.
{EP} has no provision for tables of contents, indices, or footnotes.
It does not do hyphenation (though it does know how to use conditional
hyphens that you place in a text), and it cannot obtain items from
disk files to plug into form letters.

Within these limitations, a lot of power is available.
{EP} has upwards of 160 formatting commands to select font, print style,
point size, indentation, and page headings or footings.
The method of right justification is moderately sophisticated,
and selected pairs of letters can be kerned.
There are relatively few special program restrictions.
For instance, there is no limit to the number of different fonts
that can be used in a document and no limit to the number of
lines in a heading.
The Epson's own characters in any print style the Epson knows about
can be used and freely mixed on a line with {EP}'s fonts.
{EP} allows a block-structured approach to
formatting (in regard to font and print style),
and there is no limit to the amount of text which can be
in a block, and practically none to the nesting of blocks.

This text itself was printed using {EP}, and it is intended to illustrate,
not the power of the program, but rather that pleasing results can
also be achieved without great elaboration.
There are no formatting commands at all in the disk file for this
text.
It was ``imbedded'' into a file called {form1} which has a few introductory
commands to select a couple of fonts and print styles, to set the
shapes of paragraphs, and select a heading and footing.
The use of such format files is just a special case of a generalized
file imbedding facility.
Actually, it is not necessary to have any formatting commands around at all,
since {EP} would be happy to use the Epson's ``pica'' characters,
and it won't reform lines into paragraphs or right justify unless you
ask it to.



Here is what you need to use {EP}:
    (1)    {CPM 2.2} and an 8080, 8085, or Z80 processor,
    (2)    48k of RAM (but the more the better),
    (3)    an Epson FX- or MX- series printer,
    (4)    a printer interface which transmits 8th bits, and
    (5)    which is accessed through the BIOS List vector,
    (6)    the program itself, {EP.COM},
    (7)    the configuration file {EP.INI}, which must be on
        the disk in the default drive,
    (8)    probably several font files, with extension {.FN2},
    (9)    preferably the program {EPERROR.COM}.

{EP} was designed with the FX-80 printer primarily in mind.
A special version can be supplied which will make use of the longer
lines on the FX-100 (or MX-100).
On MX printers a lower resolution graphics mode must be used, but
the loss in print quality is quite small.
I don't know anything about Epson's RX series -- perhaps one of those
would work, too.

If you use an MX printer, you'll have to include the command {\\mx} in
your files, at least until you have gotten around to changing the
defaults in {EP.INI} in a way that is described elsewhere.

To print this document required additional files: a format file {form1},
the text itself, {ep.doc}, and files for the two fonts used, {timeroma.fn2}
and {timeroit.fn2}.
The command issued to CPM was this:
    A>ep form1 ep.doc

You might want to try this on one of your own text files at this point,
just to see what happens.
{EP} expects the files it has to format to be CPM-standard, with each
line ending in a CR and LF.
Tab characters are appropriately interpreted.
It can also deal with WordStar's ``document'' files and with Pmate
files that have embedded format controls (it just ignores the formatting
information, though).

A large number of font files are supplied with {EP}, which all have the
extension {.FN2}.
With these comes a screen-oriented editing program {ECHED.COM} for
modifying these fonts or creating new ones.
There is a provision for converting back and forth from {EP}'s
font files and those used by FancyFont, in case you have the latter.
{ECHED} can be used with most any terminal that has cursor addressing,
and a special version is available for the Wyse 300 color terminal.

The program {EPERROR.COM} is called by {EP} when there is an error.
It reports the nature of the error, and allows you to examine the
current values of {EP}'s system variables.
It can also be called independently from CPM immediately after {EP}
has processed a file.

Along with this document are others giving information about how to
use {EP}.
  {EPCMDS.DOC} is a list of {EP} commands.
  {EPUSE.DOC} is a series of notes on using {EP}.
  {EPREF.DOC} is a reference explaining, or at least noting, the nature
and purpose of each formatting command.
  {EPERROR.DOC} is a manual for {EPERROR}.
  {ECHED.DOC} is a manual for the font editor {ECHED}.
  {EPDEMO.DOC} is collection of examples of how to use various formatting
features.