¢HARDWARE WAREHOUSE - FUTURA ISSUE 13¢¢ After his excellent D.I.Y. write- protect switch project in Futura issue 12, Alan Hitchen now takes a look at the world of "G:" and your printer.¢¢¢G: AND YOUR EPSON/GEMINI PRINTER¢by Alan Hitchen¢¢ Written by Charles F Johnson and first published in ANALOG 35, dated October 1985, this autorun program installs a new device into the operating system called G:. It will survive RESET, but not a DOS call, unless MEM.SAV is used.¢¢ Listing a Basic program to G:, or G1:, instead of P: will now produce a printout, complete with inverse and control Characters, in whatever font is currently being used. G1: prints a 114 character Basic line as one line across the page. Listing to G2: will replicate the 38 column screen format. G3: is the same, but is double width for improved legibility. G4: is 60 columns and double width.¢¢ A copy of this program may be found on Disk U19 of the NOSAUG PD Library. Also on this disk, and by the same author, is the program PICLOAD. This utility can normally only display picture files of most formats, in Graphics mode 7+, 8, 9, 10 or 11. However if the G: device is present, it can use it to print the pictures out (not Fun With Art files) using an XIO call. Pictures can be printed in three widths, two heights, inversed or not, the quality is very good.¢¢ In your own programs a GR.0 screen can be printed with the command: XIO 16,#1,0,0,"G:" (or "G3:" for a double width printout). To print part of the screen, starting from the top, add the number of lines needed to the 16. Line spacing defaults to 8/72 inch. Change the second 0 to 1 for 9/72 inch, or 2 for 12/72. Any figure above 2 will set the spacing in n/72 inch increments, to a maximum of 127/72.¢¢ A channel may be opened to the G: device with the command: OPEN #1,8,0,"G:", for use with PUT and PRINT commands. Line spacing can be altered by changing the 0 as detailed above. Remember the device requires text to be terminated with a RETURN (155), and will not print until it finds one.¢¢ To print a GR.8 or GR.15 screen use: XIO 64,#1,W,I,"G:". Set W and I to 0 for a single width, single height, normal picture. Set I to 255 for an inversed picture. Set W to 2 for double, or 3 for a triple width picture. Use "G3:" for a double height picture.¢¢ That covers listings, text and pictures, but what about word processing? Well if you have the standard version of TextPro 4.54, you can do that also. G: lives in low memory and TextPro uses high memory, so printouts can be directed to the G: device, to use whatever font was loaded at bootup. If you examine the TextPro package (NOSAUG PD Disk U08) you will find documentation by John S McGowan, detailing his creation of a program and macro (both supplied), which will allow the loading of an alternative font at any time.¢¢ An article by the same author, explaining how to use Textpro and G: with his fontloader program, can be found in the May/June 1993 issue of the Ol' Hackers Newsletter (NOSAUG PD Disk OH05/93). If you are using DOS 2.5 instead of the suggested set up using DOS 2.0, you can rename G: as RAMDISK.COM, TextPro as AUTORUN.SYS, and still retain DUP.SYS.¢¢ Also on this disk is another program by Charles F Johnson, PRINT TOOL V9.0. This program does not use G:, but is also designed to print out listed programs or text files with any standard font. Three text sizes in three line spacings are available. Headings for title, author and date may be added, as can a line of text. A disk directory may be viewed or printed out in 2, 4, or 6 columns.¢¢ The print quality when using standard fonts is quite acceptable, and you can pack a lot of text on the page. Double width print is a bit dotty. But if near letter quality is what you require, then one of the Daisy Dot programs is needed.¢¢
