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- PP - the Page Printer
-
- Copyright (c) 1986
-
- Centurion Software Corp.
- 3917 Garfield Drive
- Stone Mountain, Georgia 30083
-
- (404) 294-1103
-
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- I License
-
- The Page Printer is distributed via the "fairware" process,
- that is, anyone may distribute the program, but if the
- program is used, the user is requested to pay a $5.00
- license fee. This license fee is a "per user" fee, not per
- processor, therefore, if you own 10 processors, simply send
- $5.00 and you may use the program on any or all of them.
- You may NOT sell, rent, lease or in any other way profit
- from the inclusion of this program with any package or
- bundle of software without a written commercial license from
- Centurion Software Corp.
-
- II Current Version
-
- This documentation supports version 1.4 of the Page Printer.
- Any earlier versions (1.0 - 1.3) are no longer supported.
- Version 1.4 provides faster screen displays. No other
- changes were made.
-
- III Version revision history
-
- Version 1.0, the original release of the Page Printer,
- supported the following options: Tab expansion, page length,
- top margin, bottom margin, line wrap.
-
- Version 1.1 added page offset (left margin), optional print
- to screen, optional suppression of high bit, optional use of
- line feed characters in place of form feeds.
-
- Version 1.2 added starting page, ending page and page
- numbering control.
-
- Version 1.3 added multiple printer support (LPT1, 2 & 3),
- compatability with MODE printer re-direction.
-
- Version 1.4 improved the speed of the screen displays by use
- of a public domain version of the printf function. This
- version does not allow redirection of the opening messages.
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- PP - the Page Printer -
- Copyright (c) 1985 - Centurion Software Corp.
- IV Command line format
-
- All options are specified in the command line. A single
- character, preceded by a slash, indicates the option.
- Several options must have a numeric specifier immediately
- following the character, with no space intervening. For
- example, /w132 specifies the Width option, with 132
- becomming the paper width. The file to be printed may be
- preceded by a drive designator and/or a directory path.
- Options and the file may be specified in any order. The
- program parses the options and interprets them accordingly.
-
- Sample command lines:
-
- pp /x4 /t5 /b8 abcd.c
- pp /s /h help.doc /@4
-
- V Options
-
- The following paragraphs describe the options for the Page
- Printer.
-
- /d# Device to use. This option specifies which of the three DOS
- printer devices to use. The default is 1. The program
- appends the number to the file name LPT, which DOS
- interprets as one of the 3 available line printers. If the
- printer selected is not available, a message will be
- displayed.
-
- /p# Page length. Specifies the number of PRINTABLE lines per
- page. The default is 66, for 11 inches of continuous feed
- paper at 6 lines per inch. The top and bottom margins are
- subtracted from this number to get the USABLE page size.
-
- /t# Top margin. Specifies the number of lines at the top of the
- page to reserve for a margin. If the number of lines is
- greater than 2, then the program will print a header line in
- the margin. The header will be the file name, the page
- number and the date and time that the print process started.
- The default is 3.
-
- /b# Bottom margin. Specifies the number of lines at the bottom
- of the page to reserve for a margin. Nothing gets printed
- in the bottom margin. The default is 3.
-
- /x# tab eXpansion. This specifies how may columns are
- represented by each tab character. The default is 8.
- (Sorry, I wanted to use T for Tabs but T is for Top margin.)
-
- /o# Offset (left margin). This specifies how may spaces are to
- be inserted at the beginning of each line during the print
- process, to allow for holes to be punched, etc. The default
- is 0.
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- PP - the Page Printer -
- Copyright (c) 1985 - Centurion Software Corp.
- /w# Width (right margin). This specifies how many characters,
- including the offset, may be placed across the page. The
- default is 80.
-
- /f# First page. This specifies what page number is to be the
- first page printed. For this process, the printing begins
- when a page number is greater than or equal to the page
- specified. All pages less than the number specified are not
- printed. Since the file is dynamically paged during
- printing, the program must read through all preceding pages
- before the actual printing begins. The actual page printed
- is affected by the /@ option (see below).
-
- /l# Last page. This specifies what page number is to be the
- last page printed. For this process, the page number
- printed on the top of the page is the determining factor.
- The actual ending page is affected by the /@ option (see
- below). The default is 65,535 (2^16 - 1).
-
- /@# start page number @. This specifies the page number to be
- assigned to the first page IN THE FILE. The default is 1.
- This parameter affects the /f and /l options (see above)
- since both of these options operate on the page number to be
- printed.
-
- /h High big inclusion. This option tells the program to print
- all 8 bits in each byte of the data file. The default is
- that the high bit is suppressed, that is, forced to 0. This
- suppression allows files created by WordStar to be printed.
- Files that use the IBM graphics character set above 7F
- hexadecimal should be printed with the /h option if the
- printer being used can handle the full IBM character set.
-
- /s Screen print. This tells the program to display to the
- screen, rather than any printer. The defaults are changed
- appropriately. (This option was primarily used to test the
- program, since I actually didn't have a printer attached
- during much of the development period.)
-
- /n No form feeds. This tells the program to use line feeds
- rather than form feeds to advance to the top of the next
- page. This allows printers that do not respond to the form
- feed character to be used.
-
- Note: All options may be specified in either UPPER or lower
- case. The same is true for the file.
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- PP - the Page Printer -
- Copyright (c) 1985 - Centurion Software Corp.
- VI Future enhancements
-
- Future enhancements of the Page Printer will include:
-
- 1) Ability to read WordStar dot commands and make the
- appropriate adjustments while printing.
-
- 2) Inclusion of printer setup strings, to enable various
- special features, including lines per inch, characters per
- inch, etc.
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- PP - the Page Printer -
- Copyright (c) 1985 - Centurion Software Corp.
-