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The Frog Prints - Read Me
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1994-01-28
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RELEASE NOTES FOR THE FROG PRINTS
Dedicated to Meredith Katherine ('Fuzzy the Calipitter') Swann
(Incipient butterfly and avid Mac 'SND ' hacker)
This is a utility of the 'one dumb job' variety. It does one job,
and does it fast and with minimal hoorah.
The Frog Prints is SYSTEM 7 ONLY. Its only interface is Drag and
Drop, so you cannot use it with earlier Systems. If you double-click
on it from a System 6 machine, you will get an error message and the
software will quit gracefully.
To use The Frog Prints _with_ System 7, simply select the files you
want to print and drag them on the program's icon or an alias of it.
What does it do?
The Frog Prints prints plain text files to the printer you have
selected in the Chooser.
That's it.
It 'recognizes' files with these creator types:
'TEXT'
'text'
'MDOS'
'mdos'
'CRLF'
'crlf'
'PREF'
The last one is for the benefit of those of us who purge files of
their heresies with Torquemmada: The Frog Prints will print a
Torquemada set file.
It presents the standard Page Set-Up and Print dialogs, and
everything your printer driver allows will work properly. The
settings you establish in these dialogs will apply for the whole
batch of files.
Of particular significance: as necessary, we are reformatting the
files for printing. The width and depth of the page are determined by
your responses to the Page Set-Up dialog, and lines are formatted to
the width. You can print the Gettysburg Address on an envelope, if
your mind turns in that direction (at 200% if your vision's not so
good).
You can have any font you want, so long as it's Courier. This is a
good choice for a Drag and Drop applet, since even if you don't have
it loaded, you'll get it from the printer anyway. Likewise, size
defaults to 10 point and leading to 12 point. The size/lead default
can be thought of as 120% auto-leading. I run C source listings at
60%, portrait, which gives me 6/7.2, unbroken lines and a lot of
lines per page.
The file name is shown, along with the page number. And as a
thoughtful finishing touch, "# # #" is centered at the bottom of the
last page of each file.
It is possible to abort a print job, once begun, by holding down
Command-Period.
The window shows the current page being imaged, to help you decide if
you might want to abort. If you have a spooler, use it. You'll be
amazed at how fast this slimly little reptile can print...
Who needs it?
I do. Maybe you do, too. I'm drowning in text: message captures, file
conversions, XPress Tags files, mail, and my own not-inconsiderable
production of text: files from FONDetective, Pairing Knife, Caesura,
Torquemada, XP8 and others. I've grown really tired of launching
Word, doing the open-alien-file thing and waiting for a window, just
to get a print-out to take home (of course, I Drag and Drop, but you
get the point). If you are likewise flailing, you might want to hop
on this lily pad.
Who _doesn't_ need it?
People who most commonly work in native-format word processor files.
The Frog Prints won't see these, nor should he. If you can stand to
wait for your word processor to do everything else, surely you can
stand to wait for it to print.
Notes for nerds...
The Frog Prints honors decimal 13 (CR). It throws away decimal 10
(LF), which you can always count on me to do. It converts decimal 9
(TAB) to 4 spaces, with a forced line-break from reformatting
happening only on the last. All other control characters are shown in
a manner similar to that used by Torquemada. For example, ASCII 12
(FF) would be printed as "<\012>".
The Frog Prints establishes a maximum line length, based on the
responses to the Page Set-Up dialog. If a line exceeds this line
length (as do most Mac files), it fingers backward looking for a
place to break the line. Valid breaking characters are the space, the
slash, and the three flavors of Mac dashes. If none are found, the
line is terminated with extreme prejudice (and without the
introduction of a hyphen or anything else not in the source text),
and the text resumes uninterrupted on the next line. This really
should never come up, but this is how it happens if it does.
That's it. As always, thanks to Shane Stanley, a masterful bloody
noodge, for making me go back and do the hard job.
Very Best,
Greg Swann
70640,1574
9/1/92
RELEASE NOTES FOR VERSION 1.0.2
"What's John's phone number again? I keep losing it."
"Can you print out just the address and travel directions?"
"I can't read that mouse type at the bottom of the fax. Can you
show it to me big?"
This version implements one very small change: it makes it possible
to print the contents of the Paste buffer.
It happens to me too often that I have to Copy out some little
swatch of text, create a New <Untitled> file, Paste, then Print,
all because I need a printed copy of that little bit of
information. I don't need to New <Untitled> file, I don't need the
memory management delays, and I certainly don't need to kill the
bugger after I'm done with it.
So this version of The Frog Prints solves that one little problem.
Where before if you launched The Frog Prints with a double-click
(that is, no drag and drop of files), you would have gotten an
error message, now the Frog will check the Paste buffer to see if
it's holding data of type 'TEXT'. If not, you'll get the error
message, just as before. But if yes, then TFP will print the
contents of the Paste buffer just as if it were a file. The upshot
is: you can print without a lot of rain-dancing, any app that can
select text can print, and even apps that _can't_ select text can
print by means of the Text Capture fKey I uploaded some while ago.
--GSS
1/28/94