EnigmA Amiga Run 1997 July/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 20 (1997)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1997-07 & 08][EAR-CD IV].iso/earcd/text/print/canon31.lha/readme;DO IT !!!

Text File | 1997-03-02 | 12KB | 250 lines

/* Canon BJC-600 driver rel 3.1 readme file */

        *******        BETA TEST 0    *******


******* DISCLAIMER *******

    The two programs contained in this package had been tested and
they probed to be reliable. However, I can not (and I will not) be
responsible for any damage resulting of their use. It's your own risk and
responsability.

    This package is labeled as BETA TEST 0 just because the only one
who has tested it up to now is the one who's writing this (I mean myself).


******* HISTORY *******

I started writing this package when I had my brand new printer on my hands
and the smiling guy from the store telling me: "...and here is your Windoze
driver, sir.". Having no support at all in my country, there was nothing
left to do but hands on.
I thought I've written this on the former release but I was wrong. I
guessed what to sent to the printer by looking what the heck the Windoze
driver sent to the printer every time I changed a parameter. The data
happened to be RLE (run lenght encoded) (and I guessed this by getting to a
deep alpha state and asking the Delphos Oracle (joke)), and hopefuly I
could realize by sending 1 pixel thick lines of known pixel lenght.
If you are interested on how the printer works (or what I guessed at
least), just let me know, I like to share information.
The driver and the preferences program were compiled under SAS/C 6.50 on my
A1200.
Thanks to the Technical Reference Series for the information to build the
drivers. Tested on Opus Directory 4.0, ProWrite 3.3, Wordworth 2.0, ADPro
2.0, Image F/X 2.5, Page Stream 2.2 (through Preferences driver), WB3.0's
Multiview, and Art Expression 1.0 (alias "the bug box") under WB3.0 on my
A1200. I think it is enough for a test...


*******  COPYRIGHT *******

    This is an unregistered work, it's shareware, and what I try to
mean is "should you like it, use it"; if you find it is useful, send a $10
donation to my address. Please keep all files together and do not change
the copyright.


******* INSTALLATION ******

    Oh yeah, I'm glad to say that you can install this beautiful
program flawlessly with the provided installer script. In case you don't
have the Installer utility (provided by C=), or if you are just the
masochist kind of guy, you can install manually by following the steps
below.
    Copy the driver file (.000 or .020 depending on your processor) to
devs:printers, you can rename it if you like; copy the CanonPrefs program
to sys:prefs. The CanonBJC-600.prefs file corresponds to my settings, you
can copy it to ENV:sys and ENVARC:sys if you like; the CanonPrefs program
selects default settings if it can't find that file. Be sure to run it
before using the driver when you install it for the first time, or the
driver will not find the prefs file and exit quite gracefully.

******* DESCRIPTION *******

Canon BJC-600 Driver rel 3.0

    Runs under WB2.04 and upwards. With this driver you can print not
only at 10,12, 17 cpi but at 15 and 20 cpi; customize your text underlines
and choose from several kinds of paper. This driver supports the shadow
command the printer device implements, so if you choose shadow characters
on your word processor and print as text (NLQ or draft), your text will be
shadowed where you choosed. You can also ask the driver to inform you when
the printer device is closed (end of printing).

Supports the following densities:
                     1-> 180 x 180 dpi, draft quality
                    2-> 180 x 180 dpi, high quality
                    3-> 360 x 360 dpi, draft quality
                    4-> 360 x 360 dpi, high quality

Densities 5,6 and 7 are the same as density 4 on ver 1.0, but be aware that
the ver 2.0 driver repeats density 2 (180 x 180 HQ) at density 5 position;
this awful trick had to be done to fool ProWrite, which refused to use
density 4 (360 x 360 HQ) because it's same dpi as density 3. Sorry, but I
didn't program ProWrite... neither could I tell my wife not to use it...

CanonPrefs program 3.1

    This program runs under WB2.0 and up. It lets you choose from many
extended preferences and stores them in the standard 2.0 ENV: and ENVARC:
directories for "Use" and "Save" options respectively. The extended
preferences are the following:
  Paper Type: You can choose the kind of paper to print your graphics on, it
will trim the amount of ink the printer will use.
  Underscore: customize what the printer will use for underlining when
printing underlined text.
  Enhanced Black: selecting this will give you darker black areas, useful in
transparencies. The program selects it automatically if you choose
"Transparency" on "Paper type".
  Outline: will print outlined characters when printing text.
  End Signal: selecting this will cause the driver to signal every time the
printer device is closed. Be aware that if the application opens and closes
the printer device while printing in strips, you  will be signaled.
Applications found doing this are: ProWrite 3.3, Wordworth 2. The driver
opens SPEAK: and writes the string in the "End String" gadget to it; the
files you need to mount SPEAK: come with WB1.3 and WB2.0.
  Double High: prints double height characters when printing text.
  Interch. space: This option controls the amount of space added between
characters, for more information consult your printer manual. The amount
of intercharacter space added is in 1/120" for draft and 1/180" for LQ and
proportional, as stated in the printer manual.
  15CPI: selecting this will force 15 CPI (ESC g) instead of pica or elite.
This means, no matter you select pica or elite, you will get 15 cpi text; but...
  Condensed: you can choose wether to use condensed pica (17 cpi) or
condensed elite (20 cpi) when the fine option is choosen in the main
Printer preferences program. I mean, if you select fine, this gadget will let
you choose between 17 cpi and 20 cpi text, no matter what the 15CPI option
is selected or not.
  Graphics Top Margin: when printing graphics, the driver will add a top margin to
the default page margin. Set in n/180 inches up to 9" (if you print at 360 dpi, the
driver adjusts itself).
  Feeder Mode: either "Auto Sheet Feeder" or "Manual Feed" are supported.
The program selects the best option according to "Paper Type" automatically,
but you can change it at will.
  End String: write here what you want the printer driver to say when
printer.device is closed; default string is "Printing job is done...".
Remember to press <enter> to enter the new string, the program will "read
it out loud" for you. This gadget will be ghosted until the "End Signal"
checkmark is selected.
  Color Correction: checking this box enables the Color Correction button,
which when pressed opens a new window. Here you can adjust Ink Compensation
options, Color Saturation and enable/disable gamma correction. I'll give a
brief pseudo explanation of what the f... I mean. Ink colors are not pure,
they differ from the screen color value, changing slider you will correct
for this. Compensation is as follows: Magenta compensates for magenta
deviation in cyan ink, this means blues tend to be violets; Yellow
compensates for yellow deviation on magenta ink; Cyan compensates for cyan
deviation on yellow ink (dark greens).Play along with them if you like, best
choice for me (up to this time...)is what I set as defaults.
Color Saturation is a way of reducing color intensity to avoid
mudging the pictures, 100% is full intensity, no attenuation is done. This
works as your TV's color control, the more you move it to the right, the
more stronger the colors are; if you leave it all the way to the left, you'll
get a black & white picture.
Computer monitors are not lineal devices, I mean, if you go from 50% brighter to
100% brighter (by changing your pallette colors from 80-80-80 to FF-FF-FF)
you won't see that much change in picture brightness. Enabling this the driver
preprocesses color intensities to live up pictures printed on paper,
emulating this monitor behaviour.



To make the text preferences work, you need to run the InitPrinter program,
so the proper init sequence is sent to the printer; no problem with graphics.
I hope I guess the way to fix it real soon...

PS: Due to the way the prefs files has been designed, the extended preferences
settings are not compatible with later releases, so you'll have to set your prefs
again. Please run CanonPrefs and select "Edit->Reset to defaults" from menu
after upgrading. THIS IS NOT NEEDED IF YOU ARE A FIRST TIME USER
Sorry, I planned compatibility but I missed a good planning.


******* Tricks ********

Some programs (ProWrite 3.3) send CR-LF before starting graphics to handle
top margins, but when starting printing graphics the printer is reset and
the page ejected, so you get a blank page and no top margin. To handle this
(sorry but it's not my bug but theirs...), you can type a dot at the very
beginning of the page, with any font at 1 point (WB2.0 and up scales any
font to any size). This ends up in a small 1/360 inch dot you will barely
notice printed at the start of the page,  and your whole page printed
correctly.


******* COLOR CORRECTING TIPS ********

    Who am I to tell you this? Well, I happen to have spent many night
hours fooling around with this f... thing and just wanted to share some
experience; take it as it is, make your own test and let me know to learn
from you.
    If you are going to print text: select 360 dpi and forget about
the whole world.
    If you are going to print a picture (e.g. a photo), good
choices are 180 dpi low quality and 360 dpi high quality. Why? Well, at
180 dpi dots are really big (did you have a matrix printer before...?) and
high quality makes the dithering "PC like" (I mean very noticeable). At
360 dpi, low quality is almost unusable, so don't use it. You can try
color correction to lighten the image, generally it helps a lot. I couldn't
find an ink compensation scheme that satisfied my color ambitions, but it
has improved a lot previous releases output; try your own if you like.
    If you are going to print mixed graphics and text (as most mortals
do), you can select color correction and try; may be the driver corrects
your text  and you end up worse. If this happens, the best solution is to
pre-process the photo on a good color processing program (AdPro, Image F/X
and look alikes) and then put it on the page. This way, you have your photo
already gamma corrected (a 20-30 % is almost right) and you don't have to
select this option on the driver, so your text prints OK.


******* FUTURE ********

    This may be the final release, except from bug fixes and may be
some additions due to nice suggestions. I decided not to dive any deeper
inside color correction because of the limited 12 bit Amiga printer device
resolution (16 shades), what means I must write my own dithering routines
to get true color. I'll wait for a better printer device (will it be ?)
supporting 24 bits before adding new color correction bells & whistles. I
will probably recode some stuff in assembler for better throughput (color
correction and RLE are quite CPU intensive). Speed is OK for me right now,
and I'm pretty tough writing 68000 assembler code (I miss my old beloved
and well known Z-80...) so this will be harder... I'm not a programmer, I
happen to be a pretty busy married man (I mean pretty busy, not pretty and
busy...); so be patient and (why not...) give me a reason to improve this
driver !!!


******* THANKSGIVING *******

    I'm getting to know some interesting people at the Internet that
likes to try new releases and help in testing, THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH
to all of you.
    Special thanks to my first registered user Karsten Krischker, who
has given nice suggestions for many times.


    Please send any bugs, comments, suggestions, programs, and of
course donations to the following address:

    Sergio R. Caprile
    Pje. Terrada 4789
    (1874) Avellaneda
    Bs.As. - Argentina

I can be reached by email on NetBeach BBS (Buenos Aires - Argentina), its
phone number is (54)(1) 384-7377, and my Internet address is always
changing...
you can try:
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]    (job address, take care of what you send)
        [e-mail]


BTW, check my home page at http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2885


Canon is a registered trade mark.

PS: Please excuse my "SpanGlish"
PSPS: You can also report "readme" bugs...