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HBSETUP.DOC
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1990-12-10
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********************************************************************
* HBSETUP - The Home Budget Management System Setup Utility *
********************************************************************
12/10/90
This program is designed to create the configuration files which
will provide printer and color support in HBMS. Be aware that on
startup, HBMS will look for these configuration files only in the
default drive or directory. This means that you should make sure
that these files are in the same drive\directory that you run HBMS
from.
PRINTER SETUP
---------------
HBMS is designed to make full use of the various options
available on most dot-matrix printers. This is accomplished through
a system of control codes and ESCape sequences sent to the printer to
turn on and off the different fonts, enhancements, etc. For example,
the printed reports make good use of underline, double-strike, and
italics. These features enhance the readability of reports in HBMS,
but are not absolutely necessary. HBMS can work without most of
them, as explained later.
* SELECTING a PRINTER *
HBSETUP comes with suggested printer commands from a selection of 35
different printers. One of them will most likely work with your
printer. When you first access the printer section of HBSETUP, ask
for a list of printers by entering "14" at the prompt. There are two
pages of printers. The Up and Down arrows move you between pages.
Many printers on the market today will emulate either the Epson,
IBM, or Hewlett-Packard brands. Check your printer manual. If your
printer can emulate one of these modes, it usually has a "dip switch"
setting to accomplish this. Sometimes you can send the printer a
command to instruct it to emulate one of these modes. This could be
accomplished via the INITIALIZE command explained below.
The printers which are most often emulated are listed first. The
others are listed in alphabetical order, and are generally printers
that are somewhat different from the popular modes. There are of
course, many more models of printers than those on the list. If your
printer emulates one of the popular modes, try it first. If not, and
your model is not listed, choose one with a similar name of the same
brand. You may have to try more than one to see which is most
compatible with your printer.
* TESTING YOUR SETUP *
Once you have selected a printer, its commands will be displayed.
Now use the F1 key to print a sample sheet of text. This sample
sheet will contain text in every font used by HBMS. READ THIS SHEET
CAREFULLY! I can not stress this point enough. Not only does it
allow you to see if the different options are working properly, it
offers insights on how HBMS uses these commands.
- 1 -
* EDITING YOUR SETUP *
If you do need to make changes, HBSETUP allows you to edit any one of
its commands. Your printer manual will list your available commands
and how they should be entered. HBSETUP expects you to enter each
character of a printer command, in a decimal format called ASCII.
Every letter, number, symbol, punctuation, etc has a numerical ASCII
value somewhere in the range of 0-255. When you enter an ASCII
character in HBSETUP you must precede it with a "#" character. This
tells HBSETUP that an ASCII value immediately follows, and also
serves as a delimiter between numbers.
Some printers will have to be reset, or put into an alternate
mode before you can get results. The INITIALIZE command is sent
before every report that HBMS prints. In most cases this command can
be left blank, but if needed, this is the place to insert a reset or
change mode command.
If you have trouble getting a specific command to work with your
printer, don't hesitate to delete it. As mentioned on the sample
printout, getting your printer into small type such as CONDENSED, is
the only absolutely necessary requirement. If all else fails, you
may set your printer to CONDENSED text manually (possibly from the
front panel), delete all 13 of the printer commands, and save the empty
data. In this case HBMS would send no commands to your printer at
all, but you would avoid the warning about not finding PRCODES.HBM.
The printer commands are listed more or less in the order of
their importance. Small text (CONDENSED) is a must. A 1/8" LINE
FEED is desirable to pack more information on a page. UNDERLINES are
used extensively and will be missed if you can not get them to work.
DOUBLE STRIKE text helps highlight certain items and ITALICS is
probably the least important. None of the HBMS printouts are
designed to be printed in PICA (10 cpi) font, but the PICA command is
used when setting up for CONDENSED (17 cpi) font. Because of the way
some printers work, HBMS sends a PICA command immediately before it
sends the CONDENSED command. This will assure that you get
approximately 17 cpi. The ELITE (12 cpi) command is available for
check printing only.
HBMS is set up to detect empty printer commands and adjust things
accordingly. This includes title spacing and page lengths. IF YOU
DO ENTER A PRINTER COMMAND, HBMS WILL TRY TO USE IT EVEN IF IT IS
WRONG. It's sometimes better to delete a command and let HBMS
adjust, than to have it try to act on a faulty command and possibly
cause trouble.
If you still have trouble setting up your printer, call and I'll
be glad to help if I can. If you get a printer to work that is not
listed and is different from others that are listed, please consider
sharing your success. Send me a copy of the test printout and a
"print screen" that shows the commands you used. I get calls all the
time for help with printer setup. I can't possibly keep track of all
the different types of printers and your help would be appreciated.
Information on successful laser printer setups would be especially
welcome.
- 2 -
COLOR SETUP
-------------
HBMS defaults to black and white screens in order to be
compatible with as many monitor combinations as possible. If you use
a monochrome monitor, you do not need to create a color support file
(COLORS.HBM).
* SELECTING COLOR COMBINATIONS *
HBMS is designed to take full advantage of color monitors. HBSETUP
has several color combinations ready for your approval. Ask for a
list by entering "13" at the prompt. The combinations are listed by
different background colors. After making your selection a sample
screen will be displayed. (The colors on the black background are
my favorite, and are the ones I used in the original programming.)
* EDITING COLORS *
The preset combinations can be changed to suit your taste. After you
make changes, the F1 key will display the results. Please be careful
that you don't set any foreground colors to the same color as the
background.
SOUNDS
--------
The various beeps and chirps that HBMS makes are controllable, and
used to be part of the Setup Utilities. However due to programming
constraints, the SOUNDS ON/OFF control has been moved to Account
Maintenance menu in the main program, HBMS.
- 3 -