~Today's Top Tip


Sending Windows stuff to a text file  -  By Simon "LuDeCk" Burrows



Those  of  you  with  knowledge  of  Windows  and  printing  will
undoubtedly know  that whenever  you  go  to  print  anything  in
Windows, Windows  opens its  Print Manager  for you  (if it isn't
open already),  and then  sends the file which you've selected to
be printed  to it.   When  Print Manager finds your printer to be
idle   (ie, on-line  and with  nothing to  print), it prints your
file.

On occasions  you may have something capable of being sent to the
print manager   (ie,  capable of being printed), which instead of
being printed  on paper you wish to be sent to a text file so you
can keep it in an electronic format. An example may be an article
in an  electronic magazine  which you wish to have in a text file
so it can be uploaded, via modem, to a friend. In many situations
when you  may want  to do this, there is an option in the program
from which  the text  is coming  from to  send the text to a file
anyway.   Sometimes, however,  you will  find there isn't, and in
those cases  you will  have to  use my  technique which is listed
below in some easy-to-implement bullets...
   
   
   
   1.  The first thing which you must do is to double-click on
       the Print Manager icon to load up Print Manager.
   
   
   2.   Next, pull  down the  'options' menu  and  from  that,
        select "Printer Setup".
   
   
   3.   From the  'Printer' window,  click  on  the  "Connect"
        button.
    
   
   4.   Now locate the 'Ports' list, scroll down through this,
        and select the "File:" entry.
   
   
   5.   Now close  down all  windows so you arrive back at the
        main Print Manager screen.  Now minimize Print Manager
        (do NOT close it down completely!).
   
   
   6.   It is  now time  to load up the program from which the
        text to be sent  to a  file is  coming.   When this is
        done, send the text in question to be printed.
   
   
   7.   At this  point, if  your program  is anything like any
        which I have experienced  before, a  window should now
        pop up called "Print to File".
   

   8.   Enter the  name of the output file which you wish your
        text to be sent  to in  the field  provided, and  then
        press [ENTER].
   
   
   
   
You should now find your text has been sent to a file of the name
which you  specified, and  this file  should  be  found  in  your
\WINDOWS directory.   As  long as what you sent to be printed was
TEXT, then  try loading  this file into a DOS text editor such as
MS-DOS edit.   It  what you  get is garbage then it is likely the
file you've  got is  in a  Windows text format, in which case you
should load  it into a Windows text editor or Word Processor such
as Write  or Word.   If this is the case and you want the text as
unformatted DOS  text, then  use the option found in most Windows
text editors   (including  Microsoft Word), to send the text to a
DOS file.

I am  unsure of  whether this  will work,  but you could try this
trick with  graphics.   In this  way you  can rip graphics from a
program which  allows you to print them but does not allow you to
send them to a file.  The output file which you send the graphics
to should  be loaded  into a  multi-format paint  package such as
Paint Shop Pro which should hopefully sort out which format it is
in and display it if possible.

When you  have completed  the task  I recommend  you go back into
Print Manager  and put the printer setting back to normal so that
future conventional  prints work  as expected.   This  is done by
going through  the same process as before, but this time choosing
your correct printer port  (usually "LPT1")  instead of "FILE:".

If you  have Windows 95 on your computer then you will have to do
a little  experimentation to see whether this technique will work
on that  Operating System, because I have no experience of it and
do not  know how  the printing  system   (or any other system for
that matter), works.



A WORD OF WARNING


In many  occasions where  you may wish to use this technique, the
text or  graphics which  you are  ripping is  copyrighted and you
will be in danger of BREAKING THE LAW. This technique should only
be used if you are sure that you entirely within your right to do
so.




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~`By                   Simon  "LuDeCk"  Burrows
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