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1992-05-06
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PRINTPOP
A Printer Setup Utility
by
Robbie J Akins
August 1987
PRINTPOP
is a utility that was written to enable the user to simply send some
common control settings to the PRT: printer device.
It's origin is due to me having to fight all the time with the settings that
Preferences sends (or more often, does not send) to my printer. Consider the
following scenario:
You have just started printing a large document to your printer.
Your printer has got a large print buffer.
You have a paper jam, and your printout is going haywire!
The easy way out is to stop the printout and then turn off the
printer to flush its buffer of all the information that it contains
and reset the paper feed.
Now startup the printout of your document again. This time things
are even worse! Preferences has not send its copy of the printer
settings to the printer again and you get another haywire printout
because the printer has gone back to its powerup settings! It seems
that the only way to get Preferences to send its settings is to
actually change the printer chosen to something else, save the
settings and then change back to the original printer. A real pain!
Hence
PRINTPOP
. Now you can call this pop-up program at any time and send
setup codes directly to the printer, bypassing Preferences.
To install
PRINTPOP
, type the command:
run PRINTPOP
from the CLI. The program will install itself with a small sign on message.
To install
PRINTPOP in your startup-sequence, put a copy of
PRINTPOP
in your
C directory and edit the startup-sequence file in the S directory to add the
line:
run C/PRINTPOP > NIL:
(the redirection to NIL: will suppress the sign on message).
Hence forth, any time that you want to invoke
PRINTPOP
just press the LEFT
AMIGA key and the F1 function key simultaneously. If you are currently using
a screen other than the Workbench screen, the Workbench screen will be
brought to the front and the
PRINTPOP
window will appear. If you are already
working on the Workbench screen, the
PRINTPOP
window will appear without
changing the depth arrangement of any other screens.
PRINTPOP
Documentation - Page 2
The
PRINTPOP
window presents a number of gadgets:
Draft/NLQ
This toggling gadget allows you to select
between draft quality printing and Near Letter
Quality printing (if it is supported by your
particular printer).
Default Tabs
This toggling gadget allows you to either set
Set/Clear
or clear the default horizontal tab settings on
your printer.
Print Pitch
This "mutual exclude" gadget allows you to select
10/12/15/PS
between 10, 12 or 15 characters/inch or else
select Proportional Spacing. These pitchs may or
may
not
be supported by your printer.
Enlarged
This allows you to turn on Enlarged printing mode
in either the 10, 12 or 15 pitch modes and again
may or may
not
be supported by your printer. Note
that when Enlarged mode is selected with a print
pitch of PS, that a character pitch of 10 cpi is
selected and that the PS gadget is "ghosted". This
is because Expanded printing
makes no sense
with a
proportionally spaced font.
Margins
There are gadgets here for setting both the left
and right margins. Pressing the appropriate left-
arrow gadget will decrease that margin by 1, and
pressing the right-arrow gadget will increase that
margin by 1. The minimum margin values are 1, and
the maximum values are 999 (should be enough for
any printer I can think of!).
Reset To
Selecting this gadget will "ghost"
ALL
other
Preferences
gadgets, and will result in an initialisation set
of codes equivalent to the current preferences
settings being sent to the printer. This is one
easy way of getting your printer and Preferences
to be talking the same values!
When you are happy with the settings you have chosen, close the window by
pressing the window close gadget and the appropriate control sequences are
sent to the printer currently assigned as the PRT: device.
If
PRINTPOP
brought the Workbench screen to the front of any other screen you
were using, you can restore your original screen by pressing LEFT AMIGA M.
When
PRINTPOP
is first invoked, it will come up with a group of settings that
are defined when the program is compiled. In the default case these settings
are: NLQ / Clear Tabs / 12 cpi / Left Margin = 15 / Right Margin = 95.
These defaults were chosen because they are usually what
I
want! If you want
to change them I'm afraid you'll have to recompile the program with your own
settings. Sorry!
Note that the first time the
PRINTPOP
window is closed that the Amiga will
load the appropriate printer driver (as defined by Preferences) from disk.
Subsequent invocations of
PRINTPOP
will not cause this.
PRINTPOP
Documentation - Page 3
At certain times you may invoke
PRINTPOP
while the printer is in use by some
other program. In this situation, when you close the
PRINTPOP
window, an
"autorequester " will appear saying that
PRINTPOP
was unable to send the
control sequences to the printer because it was already in use. Press the
autorequester "
PROCEED
" button to carry on, noting that the settings you
chose have
NOT
been sent to the printer.
TRAP FOR YOUNG PLAYERS:
When you first set up your Amiga and send a control
sequence to your printer using
PRINTPOP
before you actually print anything,
the Preferences will not know anything about that. Therefore, the first time
you do any printing, the Amiga will send the Preferences settings to your
printer, overriding any setup you did with
PRINTPOP
. Therefore,
PRINTPOP
should be used as a simple, convenient way of
CHANGING
your printer settings,
NOT
initialising them.
CAVEATS:
1)
PRINTPOP
requires version 1.2 (or later) of the operating system. It will
not
function with earlier versions.
2)
PRINTPOP
has been tested with a number of different printers, but will
not necessarily work correctly with all. This will not be a problem with
PRINTPOP
(I hope!), but will usually be due to the printer driver being
used not being compatible with the actual printer. For example, the
"official" Epson printer driver used with an original Epson MX-80 printer
will cause spurious characters to be printed on setup because the printer
driver supports margins, but the original MX-80 does not!
Ackowledgements for the inspiration and sources of help for this program can
be found in the listing of the "C" code for this program.
There are no conditions on the use of this program.
I hope you find it useful!
The author may be contacted at the following address:
Robbie J Akins
BEC
BCNZ
P.O.Box 98
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND.