Amiga Elysian Archive/AmigaElysianArchive.iso/printer/prt48drv.lha/SR.ReadMe

Text File | 1987-04-12 | 9KB | 186 lines

In this ARC file are two printer drivers, one for the Star Micronics SR-10
and the other for the SR-15.  The SR-10 driver is tested and appears to work
pretty good.  The SR-15 driver is not fully tested, but is based on the same
code, so should work properly.  These drivers should also work on the SD/SG
series if they have the same printer codes, which I believe they do.

Set your printer up as follows:  STAR MODE  (not IBM mode)
                                 ENABLE DOWNLOAD CHARACTERS
                                 LF must be from host

Most of the other settings shouldn't matter, since most/all of them are
handled in the printer driver.  If you fail to enable download characters,
you will get garbage every time the driver initializes the printer.  This is
because it is downloading 56 characters to the printer, which represents
about 764 bytes of data.

This driver supports the full character set of the Amiga.  This is only
supported under 1.2 (and later) versions of the printer.device.  This is
achieved by using a translation table for characters from hex A0 onwards.
This table sends the proper codes to the printer to do either a straight
translation to a standard character, use one of the characters in the
international character set, or one of the 56 downloaded characters.  After
printing one of the international characters, the printer is set back to the
U.S. character set.  The downloaded character set is only enabled for the
printing of the specific character mapped in the translation table.

You can still print any of the Star printers special characters from hex A0
by sending the value throught the EXTEND command -> ESC[n"x where n is the
decimal value of the character.  Multiple characters can be sent by
seperating the decimal values with semicolons.  This could also be used to
send commands directly to the printer.

These drivers tell the printer to print zero with a slash.  This makes it much
easier to distinguish a zero from the capital letter 'o'.

With these printers, you normally don't have use of Super/Sub scripts,
Italics and Boldface when in NLQ mode.  Well, this printer driver
circumvents that problem, and you now have full use of these modes.  Note
that the use of these modes with NLQ will only work when preferences print
quality is set to LETTER.  In this mode, if any of these modes are turned
on, NLQ is turned off, and a flag is set.  There are four flags, one for
Super/Sub scripts, one for Italics, one for Boldface, and the fourth one to
allow the user to turn off NLQ when preferences is set to LETTER quality.
Since there are seperate flags for the various modes, they can be mixed
together with no side effects.  NLQ will not be turned on until all of the
flags are cleared.  It is recommended that you turn on DoubleStrike print
when using any of these modes to get better looking print, since these modes
are done in the draft mode.  The Boldface/DoubleStrike combination when used
with NLQ works very good.  If you want to use the double strike mode when ever
you are using one of these "enhanced" print modes, you can just turn on double
strike at the beginning of the document, since it doesn't have any detrimental
effects on NLQ mode.

Turn on Italics with the SGR3 command, off with the SGR23 command.  Boldface
on is the SGR1 command, off with SGR23 command.  Turn on SuperScripts with
SUS2 command, off with SUS1 command.  SubScripts on with SUS4 command, off
with SUS3 command.  SUS1 and SUS3 are interchangeable, and SUS0 also does the
same thing.

Also use the PLU (partial line up) and PLD (partial line down) commands with
care since they also evoke the Super/Sub script commands to turn this on and
off.

The printer.driver command for ShadowPrint is the same as the Star printers
Emphasized print.  This only works on the printer in Pica (10 cpi) pitch and
expanded Pica (5 cpi) pitches.

If you whish to use the printers international characters with the FNT
commands, keep in mind that the printer only supports FNT0 to FNT7.  Also,
due to a bug in the Printer.Device, the FNT0 command does not put the
printer back to the USA character set, so you can get back to the USA
character set by using FNT8 (Japanese), FNT9 (Norwegian), or FNT10 (Danish
II).

The driver supports reverse line feeds using the RI command.

The commands recognized in these drivers are:

RIS, RIN, IND, NEL, RI
SGR0, SGR23, SGR4, SGR24, SGR1, SGR22
SHORP0, SHORP1, SHORP2, SHORP3, SHORP4, SHORP5, SHORP6
DEN4, DEN3, DEN2, DEN1
SUS0, SUS1, SUS2, SUS3, SUS4, PLU, PLD
FNT0, FNT1, FNT2, FNT3, FNT4, FNT5, FNT6, FNT7
PROP2, PROP1, PROP0
VERP0, VERP1, SLPP, PERF, PERF0
STBM, SLRM, CAM
TBC3, TBC4, TBCALL, TBSALL

A note about the SLPP, PERF, PERF0, and STBM:

PERF0 tells the printer to not have any top or bottom margin.

PERF tells the printer how many lines to leave blank at the bottom of the
page.  If you don't pass a parameter, the default is one line.

STBM sets the top and bottom margins.  The top margin will tell it the first
line to start printing on.  The legal range is 1 to 16.  The default is line
1 (first line).  The bottom margin is the number of lines you want on the
page printed.  This must include the lines being skipped for the top margin.
If you have a page of length 66 lines, and want the last line printed on to
be line 63, then use 63.  There must be at least one blank line at the
bottom of the page using this command.  In the example, if you called it with
66 lines, the margin would be set at 65 lines so there would be one blank
line at the bottom of page.

You must note that the STBM command takes the size of the page from the
table below.  In custom, the number of lines/page is taken from preferences
where you type this value in below the paper size selection.

If you want top and bottom margins, and want to change the page size from
preferences using the SLPP command, follow these steps:
1) Use STBM command to set your top margin (don't worry about the bottom)
2) Use SLPP to tell the printer how many lines per page you now have.
3) Use the PERF command and tell how many blank lines you want at the bottom
   of the page.

If you are going to use a different sized paper than the standard sizes,
choose CUSTOM, and set the number of lines per printed page.  Then use the
SLPP command with an argument of zero (or no argument) and the value will be
read from your preferences setting.  The above hassle is only if you are going
to be changing paper size midstream.

The STBM command is deactivated with the PERF0 command.

Paper sizes for the printers:

                   size       num lines/page       characters per line
                                1/6    1/8         pica   elite   fine
      US_LETTER   8.5x11         66     88          80      96     136
      US_LEGAL    8.5x14         84    112          80      96     136
      N_TRACTOR   9.5x11         66     88          80      96     136
SR-10 W_TRACTOR   9.5x11         66     88          80      96     136
SR-15 W_TRACTOR   14 7/8 x 11    66     88         136     163     233

CUSTOM   : number of lines/page set in preferences, margins are set by the
           left/right margin settings in preferences and this is also tells
           where the text printing is done.

For graphic dumps, the printer supports four densities.

Special setting       Density      PrintSpacing   PrintQuality

SPECIAL_DENSITY1     72v x 120h      SIX_LPI         DRAFT
SPECIAL_DENSITY2     72v x 240h      SIX_LPI         LETTER
SPECIAL_DENSITY3    144v x 120h     EIGHT_LPI        DRAFT
SPECIAL_DENSITY4    144v x 240h     EIGHT_LPI        LETTER

(note that for graphic dumps, you can set the printer to disable download
characters to get the full use of the printers buffer.  This is especially
handy for the SR-10, which has only 2K ram.  Just be sure to turn the switch
back to enable download characters (and power off/on the printer) before
printing any text.  On the SR-10, with download characters enabled, it takes
a few extra passes to print a line of graphics.  This doesn't degrade the
graphics, just takes longer and causes more wear and tear on the printer)

By default, the printer driver will position the graphic dump according to
the margin settings and keep in mind that the print pitch is also taken into
account.  If the SPECIAL_CENTER flag is used, then the graphic dump will be
centered.

The print spacing (6 or 8 lines/inch) and the Preferences setting for the number
of lines that make up the page size are used to tell the printer.device how long
your paper is in inches.  For example, if you have the page size set to 66 lines
and have the print spacing set at 8 lines/inch, then the printer.device will
assume the vertical size of your paper for graphic dumps is 66 divided by 8
which equals 8.25 inches.  Try it with other values and you should get similiar
results.


If there are any problems with these printer drivers, please let me know so I
can correct it, if it is indeed a problem with my driver.

CIS - 76475,1146

Snail - Kelly Jordan
        P.O. Box 1039
        Marathon, Ontario
        P0T 2E0  Canada

Use these driver at your own risk!

If you pass these drivers on to anybody, please include this text file to help
better explain the usage of the drivers so other people can get the most out of
it.