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1993-03-28
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SetPrint Version 1.0
Copyright 1993 by James Habel Jr.
All rights reserved.
DISCLAIMER:
Although every step has been made to ensure the correct and safe
operation of the SETPRINT program the author assumes no liability for
any direct or indirect damages caused by the SETPRINT program. If for
some reason you do have problems with the program please feel free to
contact the author at any of the places listed at the end of this file.
Feel free to distribute this program anywhere you like. Just make sure
you include both files. (SETPRINT.EXE and SETPRINT.DOC)
PURPOSE of SETPRINT:
To allow a user to have complete control over their printer(s) by
use of an easy to use menu system which the user creates himself. To
also allow the user to set up their printer with an easy to use command
line structure that can be run during the computers boot-up process.
REQUIREMENTS:
Any IBM or 100% compatible computer (8088,8086,80286,80386,80486).
MS-DOS Version 2.1 or higher.
Any printer which can be used with any of the above computers.
Your printer manual.
1 hour of your time to create the menus.
FEES:
SETPRINT is a copyrighted program and may not be modified in
any way shape or form. The cost of using SETPRINT is entirely up to
the user. If you only drop me a letter telling me what you think of
the program I'll be a happy fellow. Of course if you send along a
small donation I'll be an even happier fellow. If you have any
comments or questions about the program I can be located at the
following places:
Residence: James P. Habel Jr.
645 West Vine St.
Lancaster, PA 17603
717-291-4637
Prodigy : HGVR05A
Delphi : JHABEL
INSTALLATION:
SETPRINT can be installed in any directory you wish. Simply copy
the file SETPRIN.EXE to the directory of your choice and type the
following at the command prompt: SETPRIN <ENTER>
Once the file decompresses simply type SETPRINT <ENTER> to start
the program.
BUILDING MENUS:
Once you start the program you will see a menu on the screen that
prompts you to Create a New File. Press ENTER.
Type in the name that you wish to assign to the file you will be
creating. The name you choose should reflect the type of printer that
you will be creating the file for. For example if you are creating a
file for a HP DeskJet 500, a good file name would be HPDJ500.PRI. You
can't enter the .PRI extension as it will be added by the program when
you save the file to disk. After entering your file name press ENTER.
The next step is creating the menus. There are 8 different menus
that you can create. Use only one or use all eight it doesn't matter.
Select SETUP from the main title bar and you will see a new menu drop
down that will enable you to set up each individual menu. Select the
first option from the menu by pressing ENTER when the cursor is located
over the selection or by pressing the highlighted letter or number at
the beginning of the option.
< DATA ENTRY SCREEN >
The data entry screen (DES) is where you enter information for
all the menus you wish to create. There are 3 main pieces of data that
can be entered on this screen. They are:
1. Menu Name - This is the name that you assign to the particular
menu that you are working on. You can use up to 6
characters in the name for each of the 8 menus.
The name you enter here will be displayed on the
main title bar and can be highlighted to allow the
use of that menu. Each menu is also assigned a num-
ber from 1 to 8 that will appear above each menu
name. These numbers will be used when running SETPRINT
from the command line and will be explained later.
2. Option Name - Each menu can have from 1 to 15 options listed on
it. The name you assign to each option will appear
on the pull-down menus from the main title bar. Each
option will be preceded by a letter from A to O. These
letters can be used to select an option from a menu by
simply pressing the letter for the option you wish to
use. The letters (A-O) will also be used when running
SETPRINT from the command line.
3. Control Codes - After the field for each option name you will find
8 spaces that are to be used for entering the decimal
control codes for each particular option. For this you
will need your printer manual. The control codes will
usually be found near the back of the book.
When you are done entering a name for the menu, all the option
names and all the printer codes for each option press F3 to save the
data to disk. Press ESC to abort a menu without saving any changes.
Below I'll go thru all the steps for building a menu.
We have selected the first option on the SETUP menu (SetUp Menu
#1) and we are now looking at the data entry screen. At the top of the
screen it tells us what menu we are working on in case we forget. The
first thing we have to do is give our menu a name. Let's call our menu
PRINT. Type PRINT in the field where it asks for the menu title and
press ENTER. Now we have to enter the names for all our options plus
enter each options control codes. We'll do some simple ones first.
below are the first three options that we want to appear on our PRINT
menu and what the screen will look like when we are done.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
MENU TITLE: Print
Menu #1 OPTION TITLE CODES
Menu Item# A Carriage Return 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Menu Item# B Linefeed 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Menu Item# C Form Feed 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now you may be wondering where we got the decimal numbers to enter
in the code fields. We found them in the back of our printer manual
where they are usually located. Remember to enter the decimal codes and
not the hexa-decimal codes which are usually located there as well.
We only entered 3 options here but we could have entered up to 15. When
this menu is full we simply save the menu by pressing F3 and then start
working on the next menu.
To save you trouble later I'll now list some helpful tips to save
you time and dispair. Please read these tips before you begin working
on your own menus.
1. Each menu you create MUST have a different name and MUST begin
with a unique letter. The reason for this is that the first
letter in the menu name can be used to select that menu from
the main title bar.
2. Use as many menus that you need (up to 8). If you don't plan on
using all 8 menus it is a good idea to start with menu #1 and
work to your right.
3. When assigning a name to a menu use a name that will represent
what the menu actually contains. For example name a menu FONTS
if all the options on that menu will be used to change the
fonts that your printer will use.
4. If you have certain options that must be used in a certain order
then enter them in the order that they will be used. You will
see why this can save you time when we explain the command line
options later.
5. Each menu can contain up to 15 options. You may use all 15 or just
one, it doesn't matter. So the total number of command options
that can be entered with this program is 120 (8 menus * 15 options)
6. You may find it useful to combine 2 or more options on the same
line. For example the above example could have been combined on
the same line as:
Menu Item# A CR+LF+FF 13 10 12 0 0 0 0 0
7. Enter the name or brand of your printer under menu #8,
option O to have it appear in the upper right hand corner
of the screen.
8. MAKE SURE THAT ALL UNUSED CONTROL CODE FIELDS ARE SET TO ZERO !
To use the menus once they are created simply make sure your printer
is on-line, select the menu you want then select the option you want.
The control codes that you entered for the selected option will be sent
to your printer thru LPT1 or LPT2.
OTHER SETUP MENU OPTIONS
View PRINT.USE - Select this option to view all your most recent
selections. Every time you select an option from
a menu it will be appended to a file called
PRINT.USE. This option simply opens this file and
displays it's contents to the screen.
Delete PRINT.USE- This option will delete the file PRINT.USE. Use
this option occasionally to keep the length of
the PRINT.USE file from getting to large.
Change Directory- This option will allow you to change directories.
Since each directory can only contain up to 10
different printer files this option will be useful
for those of you with more than 10 printers.
(Yea right)
Select File - Use this option to load a different printer file
into the program.
Printer Port - Each time you select this option the program will
switch between LPT1 and LPT2 for printer output.
The current port being used will be displayed at
the bottom of the screen.
Print Alphabet - This option will print all the lower case and upper
case letters to your printer. Useful to see which
font or type face you like best.
Quit to DOS - Select this option when you wish to exit the
SETPRINT program.
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
Perhaps the most useful purpose of SETPRINT is to setup your printer
the way you like every time you boot your computer. This is what the
command line options are used for. The command line options use a very
strict format as follows:
SETPRINT [Full path to printer file] [Menu options .....]
Here is an example of how to use the command line options. Say that
we already created a file for our printer and set up all the menus. We
saved the file to disk as MYPRINT.PRI. We want to have the printer to
be ready to print in Near Letter Quality every time we boot the
computer. We know that we entered the command to turn on NLQ on menu #1
and under option B. We also know that MYPRINT.PRI is located in a
directory named \DOS as is our SETPRINT.EXE program. So to have the
printer get ready to print in NLQ when we boot the computer we add the
following line to our AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
C:\DOS\SETPRINT C:\DOS\MYPRINT.PRI 1B
Remember our example earlier with the carriage return, linefeed and
form feed. Say we want to execute all three commands from the command
line. The correct line to type would be:
C:\DOS\SETPRINT C:\DOS\MYPRINT.PRI 1A 1B 1C
-or-
C:\DOS\SETPRINT C:\DOS\MYPRINT.PRI 1A-C
In the second example the dash is used to execute consecutive items.
Note that if we were already in the \DOS directory we would only
have to type the following:
SETPRINT MYPRINT.PRI 1A-C
Use the command line option in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file only if you
want to setup the printer every time your computer boots.
You can also use SETPRINT within other programs as long as the
program you are using allows you to shell out to dos.
The command line option is also useful when used in a batch file
to setup your printer different ways for different programs.
Thank you for trying SETPRINT !