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27
5. PRINT COMMANDS
In order to obtain a printout of a document, it is first
necessary to get the file into memory. When the text is printed,
the details governing the appearance of the document are
controlled through these three mechanisms:
1. Margin Settings. The margins are set according to the
parameters described in section 5.1.
2. Printer Codes. The special codes which make your printer
function are contained in the file TW.DAT, described in
section 6.2.
3. Dot Commands. Special printer commands can be inserted
directly into your text. These commands are recognized
because they are at the start of a line and they begin
with a period, a situation which would not normally
arise. These commands are described in section 5.5.
When you are in the editing mode, you can determine your
location in the printout by hitting ^P (Ctrl-P). This command
will internally simulate the printing process, including all dot
commands, equations, and figures; and stop when it gets to the
cursor's location in the file. The corresponding page number and
distance in inches from the top line of that page are then
displayed.
5.1 Setting Margins
RGB-TechWriter saves formatting information along with the
file so that whenever that file is retrieved; the margins, pitch,
spacing, and line length are set appropriately for that document.
It is best if this information is set properly when the file is
saved for the first time, but it is still a good idea to confirm
that the margins are set correctly before you attempt to print
the text. To check or alter the margin information, use
M - Margin Settings. This command leads you through a list of
eight parameters which are stored along with the file. For each
parameter, the current value is listed. If that value is
satisfactory, you can simply hit the Enter key. If you want to
change the parameter, then use the number keys to enter the new
value. You can only use the numeric keypad if you hold down the
shift key or have hit the NumLock key. Hit the Enter key when
you are done typing the new value. After all eight parameters
have been reviewed, the text in memory is realigned from
beginning to end to insure that it fits into the specified line
width. The eight parameters presented are:
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1. Pitch. The number of characters per inch.
2. Line Width. The number of characters per line.
3. Left Margin. Inches of space on the left.
4. Top Margin. Inches of space above the first line.
5. Paper Length. Length of paper in inches (or 0).
6. Text Length. Inches of text on each page.
7. Line Spacing. Zero through Quad (Single=1.0).
8. Page Number Location. Top, Bottom, or Top-Right.
These values are interrelated so that the value entered for one
may affect the allowed range of values for subsequent values.
For example, the text length cannot be set any greater than the
paper length minus the top margin, minus 0.5 inch. This insures
that there will be room on the paper for both the text and the
header and footer lines. Alternatively, you can set the paper
length to 0, in which case RGB-TechWriter lets your printer keep
track of the paper length by sending a form feed command at the
start of each new page. If you try to enter an invalid response
for any of the parameters, a valid response is substituted and
the query is repeated. Further information about these
parameters is given in section 6.1.
5.2 Print to Printer
Printing is initiated from the file screen menu by entering:
P - Print Text. You will be asked whether you wish to print to
the screen, the printer, or the disk. Printing is normally done
to a hard-copy printer. However, RGB-TechWriter also supports
printing to the screen or to a disk file. These options are
described in the sections which follow. Having made your choice,
you can then enter the first and last page you want printed.
These are page numbers, which will start with page 1 unless this
has been changed using the dot command NUMBER (see section 5.5).
If you want to start at the beginning, or continue to the end,
just hit the Enter key in response to these queries. You can
then specify the number of copies to be printed. Entering 0 at
this point is a good way to avoid printing if you have changed
your mind. Beyond this point, the activity differs depending on
your selection of the screen, printer, or disk. To stop the
printout to any of the three devices, just hit "P" again.
It is strongly recommended that you make a habit of saving
your file before you print it, because errors during printing
(like running out of paper) can cause the computer to get lost in
certain situations. In particular, hitting either Ctrl-Break or
Ctrl-C while printing to either the printer or the screen will
cause you to exit RGB-TechWriter and lose the text that was in
memory.
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If you selected the printer as the output device, and your
printer supports both data quality and correspondence quality
printing, you will be prompted to select between the two. Enter
either C for correspondence or D for data quality. If you just
hit the Enter key, the print routine is aborted and you return to
the file screen menu.
First the print routine processes any dot commands which
appear at the beginning of your file. This allows you to set up
the page number and header before printing of the first page
begins. This initialization stage is terminated upon
encountering the first line of text or an EJECT, SKIP, or FIGURE
START dot command. The printing process proceeds through the
entire text, but is internally suppressed for page numbers which
lie outside the range specified in response to the Print Text
command. If this range does not start with the first page and
your printhead is not initially set to the top edge of the paper,
the paper is advanced to the top line of the next sheet, so that
the printer will be ready to begin printing when the first page
in the specified range is reached. Once a page is encountered
that is within the specified page range, the header is printed if
one has been defined. The header includes both the user-defined
header label and the page number, provided that the page number
location has been set to either the top or top-right position.
The location of the header line is always 1/2 inch above the
first line of text.
Printing of the page proceeds using the specified line
spacing until the allowed length of text for that page has been
filled. Dot commands are processed as they are encountered.
Factors which can cause an early skip to the top of the next page
are: insufficient room for an equation, the EJECT or SKIP dot
commands, and insufficient room for the minimum block size if
specified by a BLOCK dot command (see section 5.5).
The footer is printed at the bottom of each page. This
includes both the footer label and the page number, if the page
number location has been set to the bottom. The footer line
appears 1/2 inch below the last printable line on the page. This
corresponds to 1/2 inch plus the text length plus the top margin
below the top of the paper. Thus in the typical situation where
the top margin is 1 inch, the text length is 9 inches, and the
paper is 11 inches, there will be 1/2 inch of margin above the
header and below the footer.
After printing the header at the top of each page, any empty
lines in the text are skipped so that the next printable line
will start on the top line of the page. An empty line is defined
as one which contains nothing except spaces and a carriage-return
marker.
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Any lines which would extend beyond the allowed width of the
printer are cut off at the right-hand edge of the paper. When
the print routine either reaches the end of the text in memory,
the page number exceeds the last one requested, or a stop-print
command is issued, the paper is advanced for a final footer and
the printhead is returned to the same place it started with
respect to the top of the page.
5.3 Print to Screen
The ability to print to the screen is a valuable tool for
reviewing your file before committing it to paper. All of the
dot commands, page numbers, headers, and footers are active in
the print to screen just as they will appear on paper. The only
differences in printing to the screen are:
1. The left margin is ignored. This allows longer lines to
fit onto the screen's limited 80-column width.
2. Fractional line spacing is rounded. The screen can't put
lines up at odd intervals, so each printed line is placed
on the closest available screen line. The same number of
lines per page will be displayed as will appear on paper.
3. All nonstandard characters are printed as blank spaces.
This includes superscripts, subscripts, and alternate
characters. Bold characters will appear as normal
characters.
4. Right justification will be accomplished by inserting
spaces between words, even if your printer supports
micro-justification.
5. You can cause the printout to pause for inspection by
hitting either Ctrl-NumLock or Ctrl-S. The print is
resumed by hitting any key. Warning! Do not hit either
Ctrl-Break or Ctrl-C.
5.4 Print to Disk
It is often desirable to create a disk file which looks as
much as possible like the printed document. This file can be
uploaded to another computer or copied to a printer which RGB-
TechWriter doesn't directly support. The file will look just
like the printed version with these exceptions:
1. Fractional line spacing is rounded. Files don't allow
fractional line spacing, so each printed line is placed
on the closest available file line. The same number of
lines per page will be generated as appear on paper.
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2. All nonstandard characters are printed as blank spaces.
This includes superscripts, subscripts, and alternate
characters. Bold characters will appear as normal
characters.
3. Right justification will be accomplished by inserting
spaces between words, even if your printer supports
micro-justification.
4. The "Initial Top Margin" (see section 6.2) is set to
zero. If the disk file is later printed on paper, the
printhead should start out located at the top edge of the
paper.
The disk file created in this way is given the same name as the
original file, but with the suffix .PRN, for "Printed Version."
This file's format is strictly standard ASCII. None of the extra
information about special characters is present in this file.
You can review or even modify this file using RGB-TechWriter if
the need arises.
5.5 Dot Commands
Whenever a line starts with a period, it is interpreted as a
dot command rather than as text to be printed. These commands
perform a variety of functions related to the printing of the
file. The dot commands which are recognized are listed below.
If an unrecognizable dot command is encountered, a warning
message is generated and the line is printed as normal text. The
commands can be written in either small or capital letters. A
synopsis of the available dot commands is contained in the
editing menu, accessible from the editor by pressing function key
F1. Lines which start with a period are allowed to extend to
column 255, regardless of the current setting of the line width.
ALT - This command allows you to define (or redefine) any of the
95 allowed alternate characters directly from within the text.
This is particularly useful if you need an unusual character, but
don't expect to use it frequently. A single space should be left
after the ALT command, followed by the character to be
translated, another space, and the corresponding ASCII equivalent
string. This format is identical to that used in the TW.DAT
printer configuration file, described in section 6.3. The
alternate character is redefined when you print the text to
screen, printer, or disk; and the new definition remains in
effect until you exit to DOS (even if you start editing a new
file). This means that you could create a file containing
nothing but a series of .ALT commands to define a set of
alternate characters. To load that character set you could
simply get that file into memory and print it to screen. When
you subsequently get another file into memory, it will be printed
using the new alternate character set.
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BLOCK # - This complex command is designed to help avoid
stranding only one or two lines of a block of text at the bottom
of a page. The value supplied by # can be any positive integer.
Initially this value is set to 1. Setting # to a number greater
than 1 insures that if a block has more than # lines, no fewer
than # lines of the block will appear at the bottom of a page.
If the minimum number of lines will not fit, the rest of the page
is left blank and the block is started at the top of the next
page. The definition of a block is any group of lines which is
both preceded and followed by either an empty line, an equation
line, or a dot command. An empty line is one which contains
nothing but a carriage-return marker. Thus, to make sure that a
section title doesn't get separated from the text which follows,
set # to 3 or more, and make sure that the blank line between the
title and the text contains at least one space so that the title
and text are forged into a single block. If you want to create a
division between two blocks without inserting an empty line, use
the REM dot command.
EJECT - Forces an immediate skip to the top of the next page,
leaving the rest of the current page blank except for the footer.
FIGURE - After the current page is completed, the following page
is left blank except for the header and footer, including the
page number. Place this command immediately after the paragraph
which first references a full-page figure. Then wherever that
paragraph appears in the printout, the page after it is left
blank for pasting in the figure or table.
FOOTER ##### - Sets the footer label to #####, effective with the
next page. Special characters like boldface, superscripts, and
alternate characters will print as normal characters in the
footer. To get a footer on the first page, this command must
appear near the start of the text, before any printable text. The
footer is printed starting 1/2 inch directly below the first
column of the last allowed line location on each page. To turn
the footer off, enter the command without any #####.
HEADER ##### - Sets the header label to #####, effective with the
next page. Special characters like boldface, superscripts, and
alternate characters will print as normal characters in the
header. To get a header on the first page, this command must
appear near the start of the text, before any printable text.
The header is printed starting 1/2 inch directly above the first
column of the top line of each page. To turn the header off,
enter the command without any #####.
JUSTIFY ON - Initiates right-justification of the printed text.
Only those lines which do not end with a carriage-return marker
are justified. The right justification is not shown when editing
the text, but it is shown if you print to the screen. If your
printer supports horizontal motion indexing (HMI), then the
justification is "micro-justification," where the extra space
needed to fill out each line is divided equally between all
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characters and spaces on the line. If your printer does not
support HMI, the extra space needed to fill out the line is
accomplished by allocating extra spaces between words. The
print-to-screen and print-to-disk options use the method of extra
spaces between words.
JUSTIFY OFF - Turns off right-justification. This is the
default.
NUMBER ## - Sets the page number, effective with the next page.
The ## can be any integer value (even negative). The pages which
follow will have successive page numbers. The first page of the
file is initially set to 1 unless you use this command to set it
otherwise, in which case this command must appear near the start
of the text, before any printable text.
NUMBER ON - Turns on page numbering, effective with the next
page. Page numbering is initially off, so to get numbering you
must include this statement in your text. To get a page number
on the first page, this command must occur near the start of the
text, before any printable text.
NUMBER OFF - Turns off page numbering, effective with the next
page.
REM - Remark line. The entire line which starts with this
command is ignored, to allow you to insert reminders to yourself.
SKIP #.## - Allocates a contiguous block of empty space which is
#.## inches in length. If there isn't enough room left on the
current page, the space is placed at the top of the next page,
leaving the rest of the current page blank except for the footer.
SPACE #.## - Changes the line spacing to #.##, where #.## is
referenced so that 1.0 is single spacing, 2.0 is double spacing,
etc. Values from 0.0 to 4.0 are permitted, including fractional
spacing like 1.5. The new spacing takes effect immediately, and
continues until another SPACE command is encountered. The
initial value for SPACE is set from the Margin Setting command
(M) in the file screen menu. Printing to the screen or disk can
not faithfully reproduce fractional line spacing. Spacing less
than 1 is useful for very complex expressions, but see section
4.3 for use of subscripts and superscripts in this case.
TABLE START - This command can be used to indicate the beginning
of a table. A "table" could just as easily be a figure, where
you leave room to paste in the figure and only type the caption
at the bottom. When the text is printed, the table will be
inserted where it appears in the text if there is enough room for
it on the current page. If there is not enough room, the table
is delayed until the top of the next page. The current page is
then filled out with the text that follows the table. If another
table closely follows the first, it is also delayed until the
next page, even if it would fit in the remaining space on the
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current page. Thus the tables will always appear in the proper
sequential order. The line spacing is automatically changed to
single spacing beginning with the first line following the TABLE
START command. It is restored to its previous value following
the TABLE END command. You can change the spacing within the
table using the SPACE dot command. You may also use other
printer dot commands within the table like SKIP and EJECT. If
you use EJECT (to create a full-page table or figure), it should
be the last line before the TABLE END command. You can also use
equation lines within the table. If the table as defined does
not fit on a single page, the table is printed where it appears
in the text. This situation can result if you use a TABLE START
command but forget the matching TABLE END command.
TABLE END - Identifies the end of a table. This command causes
an error message if a preceding TABLE START command has not been
encountered. You will want to leave one or two blank lines
between the end of the table and the TABLE END command to
separate the table from the text which follows.
PRINT COMMANDS
