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1992-03-14
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Q U I C K P R I N T
An easy and fun to use
text file print utility
Version 3.0
March 14, 1992
DISCLAIMER
QuickPrint is provided as is, free of charge. There are no
warranties written or otherwise implied. While no problems are
expected the author assumes no responsibilty for damage to data
or hardware that arises out of the use of this program.
INTRODUCTION
QuickPrint is a handy and easy to use ASCII text print
utility. Some of the highlights of the program are:
- It is "human engineered" (ergonomically designed) to
provide maximal visual input with a minimum of fuss
(more on this later).
- Very few keystrokes are needed to load, view and print a
file.
- It tells you how many pages will be printed before
printing starts.
- It has a progress bar to give you quick input on the
status of the printing.
- It tells you which page is currently being sent to
the printer.
- The number of the print page you are viewing is displayed.
- The picklist is large, easy to read, alphabetically
sorted, includes the most important file information and
searches for names alphabetically.
- Works with color and monochrome monitors.
- Will automatically provide pagination and footers (page
numbers) for unformatted files. If a file is formatted
with form feeds then QuickPrint will not add formfeeds
or footers. Footers can be toggled off.
- Files can be tagged for easy printing of multiple files.
- Can print with or without line numbers.
- Can change number of lines printed per page.
( Default is 58 lines not including the footer ).
- Can add margins to left side of page.
- Can print blocks of text.
- Can delete and rename files.
- Can search for text.
The major design philosophy behind QuickPrint's development
was that it should be a no frills, easy to use print utility that
will automatically provide pagination and page numbers.
This makes it an excellent tool for printing Readme and
documentation files provided on disks with programs. It is also
ideal for programmers wanting to print hardcopies of their code.
USING QUICKPRINT
A. THE PICKLIST
QuickPrint has been compiled as QP.EXE. It can be started by
typing QP alone or following it with a filename. If no name is
provided a picklist will be displayed. Starting with version 2.60
QuickPrint now handles command line arguments with more flexibility.
Typing a directory on the command line (i.e. QP direct\sub1\sub) will
list the files in that directory. You can also follow the directory
with a filename and you will go directly into that file. Dos wildcards
are also supported ( i.e QP c:\temp\file.* ).
The long horizontal window bar on the bottom displays identification
and the number of files in the directory. The central picklist window
displays the current directory's filenames, 21 names per display, sorted
alphabetically. The highlight bar is placed approximately in the middle
of the list to provide equal access to the filenames.
The following keys will work to allow navigation through the
list:
Home - This will put the highlight bar at the top on the very
first file.
End - This puts the bar at the bottom on the very last
filename.
PgDn - This pages down through the list displaying 21
filenames at a time.
PgUp - Same as PgDn except pages up through the list.
Up Arrow - Scrolls up through the list, one filename at a
time.
Dn Arrow - Scrolls down through the list.
Alpha Numeric - Any filename starting with a printable ASCII
character may be searched for by pressing the appropriate key.
For example, pressing the 'A' key will place the highlight bar
on the first filename starting with an A. When possible this
name will be placed in the middle of the display. This is not
case sensitive. Subsequent presses will scroll through the list
of files starting with that character. If possible, the
highlighted filename will remain in the middle of the list.
Esc - Pressing the escape key terminates the program and
places you at the DOS prompt.
Enter - Pressing the <Enter> key starts the main program and
loads the file currently highlighted. ** NOTE ** If you
tagged several files for printing, pressing <Enter> will
put you into a large window with the names of the tagged
files displayed. The text is NOT viewed in the window
when printing multiple files like it is when only a single
( untagged ) file is selected. Keeping this in mind you may
want to view the files individually before tagging them.
Space bar - The space bar will tag/untag a file for printing.
It serves as a toggle. This is used to create a list of several
files that are to be printed consecutively in the order they
are selected. When a file is tagged an asterick ( * ) will
appear next to the name.
Alt-D - This combination will untag all files at once.
Alt-F2 - Deletes a file. You will be given the ususal prompt
requiring a response before the file is deleted.
Alt-F3 - Renames a file. You can rename a file according to
DOS standards. Incorrect names will result in an error. If
you activate this feature and decide to leave the name as is,
simply leave the line blank and press enter.
B. VIEWING FILES
Quickprint is meant to print files and is relatively crude at
displaying them. This feature is provided so you can quickly scan
the file to determine if it's worth printing. The selected file is
loaded into available memory. If not enough memory is available,
only that which will fit into memory will be loaded. The rest of
the file will be truncated. If this occurs, you will see 'TR'
displayed in the lower window bar just prior to the '<ESC>
to quit' message. This has no affect on printing. Despite
truncation, the ENTIRE file will be printed. The file is printed
from the disc, not from memory. Individual lines longer than 80
characters will be truncated to 80 characters on the display but
again, this does not affect the printed form.
Because QuickPrint has to read the entire document one line at
a time, and formats each line for display, some longer files may
take quite a few seconds to be read, especially if on a floppy
disk. After this is accomplished however, the file will be in
memory and no additional disk reads will be needed.
THE UPPER BAR WINDOW
The left hand side of the bar displays the filename. To the
right of the filename it is indicated that F1 pulls up the
help screen. After viewing the help screen you may return to
viewing your document by pressing either the space bar, return
or escape keys.
You will then see "Txt Width= 80". This indicates how many
characters you will be printing per line. This comes in handy when
printing in compressed mode for example and you desire to print more
than the standard 80 characters per line. *THIS IS NOT A RIGHT HAND
MARGIN*. This should be used only when you have configured your printer
to print other than 80 characters per line, such as compressed mode or
you are using fonts that print other than 80 characters per line. The
purpose of this to allow quickprint to properly format the text,
keep correct count of lines printed and to properly print the footer.
This can accessed by pressing the ALT-W combination. Valid values
are 5 - 250 characters.
The keys operable while viewing a file are as follows:
Alt-P - Pressing the Alt-P combination immediately
starts printing.
Alt-L - Will print with line numbers.
Alt-M - Will set left hand margin. Valid margins
are from 0 to 70 spaces.
Alt-N - Sets number of lines printed per page.
Valid numbers are 1 to 250.
Alt-F - Send formfeed to printer
Alt-R - Send linefeed to printer
Alt-C - This version does not automatically count
the number of pages to print. This allows
for much quicker loading of the file. You
can get a count of the pages by pressing
the Alt-C combination. The count will be
displayed on the bottom line and will be
provided in any case when you start printing
since the program needs this information to
track the progress of the print job.
Alt-X - This will immediately exit the program without
returning to the file directory.
Alt-F5 - Toggles on and off the printing of the footer
( filename, date, time and footer line ).
Alt-F6 - Toggles printing of page number.
Alt-W - Set number of characters per printed line
( see above ).
Block commands:
F7 - Turn on the block feature.
F8 - Locks the block.
ALT-U - Unmarks the block of text.
Navigational keys while viewing a file are:
Home - This puts you at the very beginning of the file.
Twenty three lines are displayed at a time.
End - This puts you at the very end of the file. If the
file was truncated due to memory limitations, the last 23
lines of the shortened file will be displayed.
Up and Down Arrows - Scrolls the cursor one line at a time
in their respective directions.
Left and Right Arrows - puts the cursor at the top and
bottom of the screen respectively.
PgUp and PgDn - Move through the file one screen at
a time, backward or forward respectively.
F2 - Search for text. A window will pop up and ask for
the text to be located. Pressing Enter, Esc, or Space
without typing anything will get rid of the window without
conducting a search. ** Searching starts at the cursor
and goes forward through the file. ALL occurences on
the same line will be highlighted.
F3 - Repeats the last search. If you had not previously
searched for any text a message will pop up asking you
to first start the search with F2.
On the far right is the page number. This corresponds with
the printed page numbers. NOTE: This is different than earlier
versions where this was the display screen number which did not
correspond to printed page numbers.
THE LOWER BAR WINDOW
This is a rather dynamic window. Most messages and
pertinent information will be displayed here. When viewing
the file the line number will be displayed on the left hand
side. Then, either TOP or END will be displayed if you are
at the very top or bottom of the file. Then you will see the
word BLOCK if you have have turned on the block function (F7).
More information on the block function follows shortly.
Next, the number of print pages is given. This number will
appear only if you first press Alt-C to get a count of the pages,
or if you print the file then return to viewing it. This is how
many pages the printed document will be. If the document contains
formfeeds this number gives a count of them. Otherwise, a printed
page contains 58 lines of print, not including the margins and footer.
This provides roughly a one-half inch margin both at the top and
below the footer.
Fifty eight lines printed per page is the default number.
This can be changed by pressing the ALT-N key combination. The
acceptable range of lines per page is 1 to 250. Fifty five (or less)
is recommended for laser printers. A larger number can cause the
footer to be pushed onto the next page.
To the right of the page count the amount of lines printed
per page will be diplayed as "Li=58" with the 58 being replaced
by the proper number should you decide to change the number. If
you change this number the amount of pages to be printed will be
adjusted accordingly.
Just to the right of this number is the size of the margin.
The default is 0 ( "M=0" ). If the number is changed it will be
reflected in this display. For example, "M=5" for a margin of
5 spaces. The page count is not updated to reflect margin changes.
If you select either Alt-M or Alt-N then decide to leave the
value as is, pressing enter without inputing any numbers will
abort the process and the values will remain unchanged.
If the file was too big to fit in memory the letters "TR"
will appear after the margin number to indicate that the file
was (TR)uncated to fit in memory. Again, this has no effect on the
final print job.
You will then see "FN". These two letters indicate that the
(F)ooter and page (N)umber will be printed. You can toggle the
printing of these two components by pressing the Alt-F5 combination
for the footer and Alt-F6 for page number. If you print with only
the page number it will be approximately centered on the bottom
of the page. The footer (F) component contains the filename,
file date, file time and the line that runs across the page bottom.
Finally, the last bit of information is self-explanatory.
<Esc> will always stop printing or terminate the viewing of a file.
If viewing a file it will put you back at the file directory. Pressing
the ALT-X combination will immediately exit the program and put
you back at the DOS prompt without displaying the filename list. If
you tagged files for a list <Esc> will put you back at the picklist.
C. PRINTING
At any time you may start printing by pressing the ALT-P key
combination. Use the ALT - L combination if line numbers are
desired . Make sure your printer is on and the paper is
properly lined up. It's best to start printing at about one-half
inch from the top. This gives the best appearance of vertically
centered text, including the footer. Printing will always start
at the beginning of the file and will print the ENTIRE file, even
if it was truncated.
While printing you will see several windows. If you are
printing only one file ( no files were tagged ) the large central
window will display the text as it is sent to the printer (or buffer).
Below this will be displayed a horizontal progress bar that gives
you percentage of completion. This is handy in that it allows you
to easily see the progress of the print job.
If you tagged several files for printing, you will see the
list of files displayed in the main window rather than the text
that is printing. You will however be advised of the status
of the print job by the progress bar. The bar starts over for
each file. The file that is printing is highlited in the window.
Files whose printing is complete are diplayed in reverse video.
The very bottom window will now show on the left, the number
of total print pages (in case you forgot). In the central part,
the page being printed will be shown. Between this and the progress
bar you'll have plenty of visual representation of the status of
your print job.
** You can pause printing by pressing <ESC) or the spacebar.
At this point, any key except <ESC> will resume printing.
Pressing <ESC> again will terminate the print job and put you back
in the view mode ( or the file list if files were tagged and
you are printing from a list). Therefore, the spacebar can act
as a toggle to alternately stop and start printing.
If the printer is not on or not online, a message will appear
to alert you of this.
If no formfeeds are detected, QuickPrint will add them, along
with a footer that provides the name of the file and it's date and
time on the left and the page number on the right if the the footer
toggles are on.
BLOCK COMMANDS
Pressing F7 turns on the block mode and highlights the line
the cursor is on. The beginning of the block is anchored to this line.
You may expand the block by moving the cursor up or down but the block
will always be anchored to the initial line. If you want to change it
you need to unmark the block with ALT-U then move the cursor to the
new line and press F-7 again.
While the block mode is on, the right hand side of the lower window
will indicate how many lines are blocked. This is helpful for printing
purposes. Also, to remind you that text is blocked the word block will
be displayed in the lower window with a blinking triangle. You may print
a block by pressing the Alt-P or Alt-L key combinations. While printing,
the line number being printed is displayed on the bottom left hand side.
You can lock the block in place by pressing F-8. The beginning and
end of the block are locked and the cursor is now free to move around
without affecting the blocked text. Be careful when you block text
then scroll it off the screen. The text is still blocked and if you
activate printing the block will print even though it's not being viewed
on the current screen. When you lock the block with F-8, the word block
in the lower bar will be surrounded with [brackets] and the little
blinking triangle will be replaced by the opening bracket.
When you print a block the program will send footers and formfeeds
to the printer so if you blocked more than one page of text it will skip
over the perforation. However, it will not issue a formfeed at the
end of printing. This is to enable you to be able to print several
small blocks on one sheet of paper. Be careful though. If you print
several small blocks on one page the program does not know where the
perforation is so you should manually send a formfeed (ALT-F) when you
get near the bottom of the page.
Once you have completed printing a block you can unmark it
by pressing ALT-U. Press F7 to start the block mode again.
D. FINAL COMMENTS
Since reading the file is disk intensive, it would be faster
to use your hard disk if available. This becomes especially
important for long files.
QuickPrint stores the file in memory in slightly smaller than
65K chunks. It would allow more of the file to fit in memory if
memory was contiguous and not "chopped up" by other programs.
Rebooting the computer will give you the largest possible
contiguous piece of memory. Any TSR programs, RAM print buffers,
disk-caches, etc. will decrease available RAM for use by
QuickPrint.
This program has been compressed with LZEXE91. This is an
excellent compression program that compresses executable files
and the program still remains executable - you don't have to wait
for it to decompress. You will notice that it can be compressed
no further by using other compression utilities such as ARC or ZIP.
In order to keep this a simple to use program it is minimally
configurable. ** The configurable settings are now automatically
saved when you exit the program **. They will be the new default values
when the program is started up again. The values are saved in a file
called QP.CFG which is created the first time the program is run and
is stored in the same directory as QP.EXE. If the program can't find
QP.CFG it will use the original default values.
There are no command line "switches". If you like
this program but would like some minor changes made, let me know.
I'll see what I can do to accommodate you.
I am interested in your questions or comments. Please feel
free to contact me at the following address or on CompuServe. My
CompuServe ID number is 71541,743. I may also be contacted on GEnie,
where my address is J.DEROSE1. If you like or even dislike this
program I encourage you to let me know. Your responses are what
keeps me motivated to improve the program. All the changes in
previous versions were the result of user's suggestions.
Enjoy!
Thank you.
Joseph L. DeRose
825 Dora Place
Bel Air, Maryland 21014
APPENDIX A
Summary of key combinations and examples of the status bars.
F1 : Help screen.
ALT-P : PRINTS the document without line numbers.
ALT-L : PRINTS the document with line numbers.
ALT-M : Adds or changes the MARGIN on the left side.
ALT-N : Changes the number of LINES PRINTED per page.
ALT-C : COUNTS the number of pages that will be printed
taking into account the number of lines printed
per page.
ALT-F : Send FORMFEED to printer.
ALT-R : Send LINEFEED to printer.
ALT-D : UNTAG all filenames.
Space Bar : TAG/UNTAG a filename.
ALT-X : EXIT program without returning to directory.
ALT-F5: Toggles printing of (F)ooter.
ALT-F6: Toggles printing of page (N)umber.
F7 : Turns on BLOCK.
F8 : Locks BLOCK.
ALT-U : UNmarks BLOCK.
ALT-W : Characters printed per line ( text width )
ALT-F2: Delete a file.
ALT-F3: Rename a file.
UPPER BAR
File: <FILENAME.EXT> < F1 for HELP > Txt Width= 80 Page: ##
^ ^ ^
| | |
| Width of printed text |
| Number of Print Page You Are Viewing
Print Document
LOWER BAR
Line: ### TOP [BLOCK] 4 pages Li= 58 M= 0 TR <ESC> to Quit
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | | | | Truncation |
| | | | | Margin - Left Side |
| | | | Lines Printed per Page |
| | | Num of Pages to Print |
Line Number | Displayed When in Block Mode |
of Text "TOP" When at the Top of File |
"END" When at the End of File |
|
This will be Replaced with the Number of Blocked Lines
when the Block Function is on.
LOWER BAR WHEN PRINTING
Pages: 4 Printing: 2 Li= 58 M= 0 <ESC> to Quit
^ ^
| |
| Page Being Printed
|
Number of Pages That Will be Printed