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1991-01-07
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Double-Page IV
by
Douglas N. Wheeler
Copyright 1990-1991, All Rights Reserved
______________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
______________________________________________________________________
Double-Page is a utility which allows laser printer owners to
print text (ASCII) files such that two "pages" of the file are printed
on each sheet of paper. The pages are full 66 line by 80 character
pages reduced in size so that two of them can be printed side-by-side
on a standard 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper.
Alternatively, you can print one 132-column page instead of two
80-column pages.
You also have the option to print on both sides of the page,
which allows you to print up to four pages on one sheet of paper!
This had two advantages over standard printing:
1) You will need half (or a quarter) as many sheets of paper to
print the same file. This becomes very important with long
program listings.
2) Since Double-Page puts a larger margin along the "top" edge of
the page, it is a simple matter to three-hole-punch the pages
and put them into a 3-ring binder even if the page contains
full lines.
______________________________________________________________________
USING DOUBLE-PAGE
______________________________________________________________________
Double-Page was designed with simplicity in mind. When you first
run the program, you will find yourself with a standard GEM menu bar
on the screen. The menus are layed out as follows:
Desk
About Double-Page IV... Displays a title/copyright box.
File
Print File... Print a file using the parameters
set up in the other menus. This
will be greyed out if you haven't
selected a printer driver.
Use Default Font Causes Double-Page IV to use the
built-in font (typeface) when
printing.
Use FILENAME.FNT Causes Double-Page IV to use the
font specified. This will be
greyed out if you haven't loaded
an alternative font.
Load Font... Allows the loading of a font from
disk.
Select Printer... Allows the loading of a printer
driver from disk.
Save Settings... Saves your current set-up to disk
such that the next time
Double-Page IV is run, the
configuration will be the same
Quit Exits Double-Page.
Layout
1 x 132 Chars. Causes printout to use the one
132-column page per side mode.
2 x 80 Chars. Causes printout to use the two
80-column page per side mode.
Single-Sided Causes printout to use only one
side of each sheet of paper.
Double-Sided Causes printout to use both sides
of each sheet of paper.
Collate Pages Causes double-sided printouts to
start with the even pages, then
print the odd pages.
Options
Border Causes the printout to have a
border around each page on a sheet.
Header Causes the printout to have a
header at the top of each page.
Tab Size (8)... Allows you to change the tab size.
The number in parentheses is the
current setting.
Edit Header... Allows you to change the format
and content of the header.
Audio Alerts Causes a bell to ring when user
action is required (paper need
turning over, an error has
occurred, etc.).
______________________________________________________________________
OPTIONS IN DETAIL
______________________________________________________________________
1 x 132 Chars.
This mode would be used when the lines in the file being printed
extend beyond 80 characters per line. This is useful with spreadsheet
printouts and program listings with long lines. In this mode, each
page is identical to wide computer paper (132 columns x 66 lines)
compressed to fit onto an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper (sideways)
2 x 80 Chars.
This mode would be used when the lines in the file being printed
fit within an 80 character line. In this mode, each page is
identical to a standard 8.5" x 11" piece of paper (80 columns x 66
lines), although compressed to fit two pages per sheet of paper
(sideways).
Single-Sided
This mode uses only the front of each sheet of paper. This is
useful if you don't want to be around to turn the paper over, or if
you find single-sided printouts easier to handle.
Double-Sided
This mode uses both sides of each sheet of paper. Double-Page
IV will print the front of each sheet, then alert you to turn the
stack of paper over and reinsert it into the printer. Once this is
done, it will print the back of each sheet.
This mode has several advantages over single-sided: it uses half
as much paper, when placed in a binder, the pages are layed out such
that you can look at 4 pages at once, etc.
Collate Pages
Because of the way that some printers feed paper, Double-Page IV
gives you the option of printing either the odd or even sides of the
sheets first. When collation is off, Double-Page IV will print the
odd sides first (use this for the Atari SLM605 with the
straight-through paper feed). When collation is on, it will print the
even sides first (use this for the Atari SLM804).
Border
This option turns the printed border on and off. This is a
matter of personal preference whether you want a border or not.
Header
This option turns the printed header on and off. The header,
when turned on, will appear at the top of each page. You can edit
this header to include useful information about the printout
including the name of the file, page number, date, time, etc.
Tab Size
This allows you to adjust the tab spacing. When you selection
this option you will be presented with a dialog box containing
buttons for the most common sized (2, 4, 5, and 8 characters) as well
as a box for a custom size which you can set to any value from 1 to
40 characters.
Edit Header
This option allows you to edit the printed header in many ways.
You can enter any text which you'd like printed in the header, as
well as a number of 'variables' whose value will be filled in
automatically by Double-Page IV at print time.
The header is composed of three parts: the left part, which is
left-justified; the center part, which is centered over the page; and
the right part which is right-justified.
The variables which may be included are:
%F - inserts the name of the file being printed.
%P1 - inserts the current page number relative to the start of
the current file.
%P2 - inserts the current page number relative to the start of
the current job (which may consist of multiple files).
%D1 - inserts the current date of the month (1-31).
%D2 - inserts the current date of the month with a leading 0 if
the date is less than 10 (01-31).
%D3 - inserts the current day of the week (Sunday - Saturday).
%M1 - inserts the current month (1-12).
%M2 - inserts the current month with a leading 0 if the month is
less than ten (01-12).
%Y1 - inserts the current year as a 2-digit number (00-99).
%Y2 - inserts the current year as a 4-digit number (1800-2999).
%H1 - inserts the current hour in 12-hour format (1-12).
%H2 - inserts the current hour in 24-hour format (0-23).
%M - inserts the current minute (00-59).
%S - inserts the current second (00-59).
%AP - inserts the text 'a.m.' or 'p.m.' for morning or
afternoon, respectively.
%% - inserts a '%' character.
The time and date values are computed at the beginning of each
file and won't change in the middle of a printout.
Keep in mind that if the parts of the header are too long, they
may overlap each other. This won't do any harm, it'll just look
funny.
Audio Alerts
With this option selected, the computer will use an audio signal
to alert you when it's time to turn the paper over, or when an error
has occurred. This is useful if you want to be doing other things
while a printout is in progress.
______________________________________________________________________
FONTS
______________________________________________________________________
Double-Page IV has one font (typeface) built in and has the
ability to load one additional font from disk. The built-in font
contains most of the characters you will need, but does not includes
the ST's extended character set (which includes most foreign
characters).
Included with Double-Page are several fonts, including these:
DEFAULT.FNT - this is a copy of the built-in font, but since
it's disk loaded, it may be modified.
DPRAZR06.FFT - this is the same as the RAZR06LS.FNT which is
included with the SLM804 (the characters are the
same, the file isn't).
SYSTEM.FFT - this is the same as the LIST06LS.FNT which is
included with the SLM804, but only contains the
characters from 0-127.
SYSTEMA.FFT - this is the same as SYSTEM.FNT, but includes all
256 characters in the ST's character set.
Double-Page IV supports two different formats for the font
files. The first is the .FNT files which are readable ASCII files
which can be edited with any text editor. These files take several
seconds to load.
The second format is a compressed format which, although not
easily editable, will load very quickly and take up less disk space.
These files have a .FFT (fast-font) extender.
See the section entitled 'FONT FILE FORMATS' for more
information on the internal structures of the font files.
Included with Double-Page IV is a font converter written by Ken
Badertscher which will convert between .FNT and .FFT formats. Many
thanks to Ken for this utility!
______________________________________________________________________
PRINTERS
______________________________________________________________________
Double-Page IV has the ability to load printer drivers for
virtually any 300 dpi printer (laser, inkjet, etc.). Included with
Double-Page IV is a driver for the SLM804/SLM605.
You'll find that Double-Page IV prints significantly faster than
previous versions. This is a result of certain portions of the
program that were moved to the printer driver and written in assembly
language.
See the section entitled 'PRINTER DRIVER FORMAT' for information
on writing your own drivers.
______________________________________________________________________
SLM804/SLM605 DRIVER
______________________________________________________________________
The SLM804/SLM605 can automatically detect the device number of
the printer (unlike previous versions of Double-Page). Also, the SLM
driver accesses the SLM directly and doesn't use the Diablo emulator,
GDOS, LaserBrain, or any other driver.
The SLM driver will detect SLM804 errors when they occur and give
you the opportunity to correct the problem and continue. Possible
errors are:
INSUFFICIENT MEMORY - there is not enough memory to create the
page. The driver needs to have 1 Megabyte of RAM free for
the page.
TONER EMPTY - your toner cartridge needs replacing. You may be
able to continue printing for several more pages, though.
PRINTER NOT READY - the printer is not warmed up. Wait until
the green 'Ready' indicator is lit before continuing. This
will also occur if there is no SLM connected.
OUT OF PAPER - the paper tray is empty. If you attempt to print
without any paper in the tray, Double-Page will revert to
manual feed.
DRUM EMPTY - your printer drum needs replacing. You can
continue, though print quality may degrade.
PAPER JAMMED - a sheet of paper jammed in the printer. Remove
it before retrying. If you are printing the backside of a
double-sided document, you should put a blank sheet of
paper in the paper tray to keep the page arrangement
correct.
COVER OPEN - the cover of the printer is open. Close the cover
and wait for the green "Ready' indicator to light.
GENERAL ERROR ## - an error of type ## has occurred. Generally,
these errors indicate either a paper jam (see PAPER JAMMED,
above) or some sort of hardware problem. Consult your
SLM804 manual or local dealer for assistance.
______________________________________________________________________
PRINTING
______________________________________________________________________
You should make sure all of your options are set up before
selecting the 'Print File...' menu option. Once you select this
option, you will be presented with a standard file selector where you
can select the file(s) you wish to print. You can either select a
single file, or type in a wildcard such as '*.TXT' which will print
all files which have a .TXT extender in the selected folder.
If you are using a wildcard, the files will be printed in the
order they are on the disk (not necessarily alphabetically), and you
have selected double-sided printing, you will be prompted to turn the
paper over at the appropriate times and remove the paper between
documents.
During printing, a status box will be displayed showing the
printer in use as well as the file being printed and the current page
number being printed.
Double-Page IV also supports over-strike printing. If a file
contains a backspace character, Double-Page will back up and print
the next character on top of the previous one. If the two characters
are the same, the second one will be offset slightly to provide a
bold appearance. This allows for boldface characters, underlining,
and overstriking.
______________________________________________________________________
COMMAND LINE
______________________________________________________________________
Double-Page IV also lets you pass filenames on the command line.
This can be done in several ways:
Using Neodesk 3 or the Atari TT, you can drag one or more files
to the DUBLPAGE.PRG icon and they will each be printed one after
another. You can also place the DUBLEPAGE.PRG icon on the desktop for
easy access.
Using Neodesk 3, or a TT, you can use the 'Install Application'
menu option to set Double-Page IV to be a GEM application which take
parameters. Once this is done, double-clicking on DUBLPAGE.PRG will
bring up a dialog box where you can type in the name of the files to
print. Simply type in the file(s) which a space between each name.
You can also use Codehead's Hotwire to pass a filename on to
Double-Page IV automatically, saving you from typing the filename.
Using a CLI (Command Line Interface), you can type the filenames as
parameters for Double-Page IV, such as:
DUBLPAGE FILE1.TEXT FILE2.TXT
Some CLIs require a variation on this since this is a GEM
applications to keep the screen from getting messed up.
Double-Page IV will also accept wildcards on the command line.
Combining this will the ability to pass several names provides many
possibilitys, such as '*.C *.H' to print all the .C and .H files in
the current folder, or '*.S READ.ME' which will print all the .S
files along with the file named 'READ.ME'.
______________________________________________________________________
FONT FILE FORMATS
______________________________________________________________________
Double-Page IV supports two font file formats:
.FNT files - these are ASCII (readable/editable) files formatted as
follows:
DP3 DON'T CHANGE THIS LINE!
189 Copyright symbol
0
0
00000000000001111111111111000000
00000000000111111111111111110000
00000000001110000000000000111000
00000000001100001111111100011000
00000000011000011111111110001100
00000000011000110000000011001100
00000000011000110000000011001100
00000000011000111100001110001100
00000000001100001100001100011000
00000000001110000000000000111000
00000000000111111111111111110000
00000000000001111111111111000000
0
0
999 End of data - DON'T CHANGE THIS LINE!
The file consists of three basic parts:
The header - the first line which must begin with 'DP3'.
The characters - each character consists of two parts:
The header - the first line which begins with the ASCI code
of the character.
The character - 16 lines of 32-bit binary numbers. When
printed, a 1 becomes a dot. Note that the
characters are pre-rotated for printing.
The trailer - the last line which must begin with '999'.
.FFT files - these are similar to .FNT files, but the are pre-encoded
into their binary counterpart. A .FFT file must contain all 256
characters in the ST's character set (although characters may be
blank). The characters are in order by ASCII number, and consist of
16 longwords.
Character 0 (which is never used) must be overlayed with a text
string starting with 'DP4'. This is how Double-Page IV detects the
difference in the 2 different font types; it reads one line of text
from the file and sees whether it starts with 'DP3' or DP4'. Since
that initial line is read as text, there must be a cr/lf to terminate
it.
With both types of fonts, once they are loaded into Double-Page
IV, the characters 1 through 6 get overlayed with the border
characters, so those character may be left blank if desired.
______________________________________________________________________
PRINTER DRIVER FORMAT
______________________________________________________________________
Included with Double-Page IV is a file called PRINTER.S which is
a basic skeleton for a printer driver. Double-Page IV calls the
printer driver and passes the address of a page layout array and the
address of the font the user selected. The driver must then convert
the page layout array into a bitmap and print it to the printer. The
driver can return an error code which Double-Page IV can act upon in
several ways.
Consult the PRINTER.S file for additional information and sample
code for creating a 300 dpi bitmap from the page layout array.
______________________________________________________________________
SHAREWARE
______________________________________________________________________
Like much of today's "free" software, this one isn't really
free. You are free to try it out without payment, but if you decide
you like it and would like to continue using it, I do request that
you send me a small shareware fee ($10 is suggested) to help offset
the time I've spent developing this program. Shareware payments
also help decide the future of this program. Send any shareware
payments to the address below.
______________________________________________________________________
VERSION II
______________________________________________________________________
Version II of Double-Page added the ability to print double-sided
pages, as well as an information line at the top of each "page"
consisting of the filename, date, time, and page number.
______________________________________________________________________
VERSION III
______________________________________________________________________
New features include: SLM804 error handling, custom fonts, and
custom default settings.
Bug fixes include: formfeed character now handled properly (it
wasn't handled at all previously), there are now 66 lines per "page"
(version II printed 67), and the mouse pointer now changes to a "busy
bee" during printing and font loading.
______________________________________________________________________
VERSION IV
______________________________________________________________________
New features include:
- True GEM application with menu bar
- Supports 1x132 printouts
- Allows complete editing of the header
- Allows the heard and border to be turned off
- Simplifies selecting arbitrary tab sizes
- Support the new .FFT small, fast font file format
- Supports alternate printers through loadable printer drivers
- Allows for wildcard (and multiple wildcard) printouts
- SLM driver automatically detects the SLM device number
- Allows pages to be collated
- Has option for audio alerts for user interaction
- Print speed has been increased greatly
- Overstrike printing is supported
______________________________________________________________________
THE FUTURE
______________________________________________________________________
I have a few ideas for future versions of Double-Page. Whether
or not there even ARE future versions depends upon shareware
contributions.
If you have any suggestions, comments, or complaints, send them
to me at (address subject to change):
Doug Wheeler
3655 S. Delaware St., #317
Englewood, CO 80110
GEnie address: DOUG.W