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Text File | 1986-12-16 | 18.3 KB | 442 lines

Documentation for Pr.Com Purpose: This program is a utility to print documents on an HP LaserJet Printer. The document is divided, by the program, into pages based on FF's or line count or a combination of both. It will print the pages one or four on a sheet in portrait orientation and two on a sheet in landscape. It will also print one-sided, two-sided, or in a booklet format. It will handle letter and legal size paper. It will expand tabs, such as used by assemblers and compilers in producing listings, with blanks. Will run from command line parameters or interactively. It is a generic MSDOS program. The program has proven useful in printing documents prepared by a word processor on both sides of the paper or two or four pages on each side in the form of a booklet. Files may be printed with the line printer font side-by-side in landscape format (assuming the printer has the font) and if desired on both sides of the paper. Input File Format: This program will print plain, vanilla Ascii files. It will also work with files containing LJ escape codes. It has been used with MS Word list files (generated as Print File output) and presumably will work with the list output generated by other word processor. Graphics have not been tested, but will probably work. The major rule is that the file must fit into the form specified. If one page is printed on a sheet, this simply means that the printing must fit in the 8.5" available. If form feeds are used to determine page length, there must be no more lines on a page than will fit in the 10.6" or 13.6" allowed. For four pages printed on a page, the rules are the same with the limits halved. For two-up landscape printing, the limits are 5.3" and 6.8" wide by 8.5" long. So do not try anything but one-up printing unless the file has been written to fit on a smaller page given the font being used. The next rule relates to font selection. When printing single sided (1, 2, or 4 up) without the reverse collate option, the pages will be printed in order. However, for double sided and booklet printing, the pages are NOT printed in order. You are permitted to select a font which will be selected at the top of EVERY page (the default is Courier in the proper orientation). Any printing which is to be done with a different font, must select the font on the page in which it occurs. A font selection on one page will not carry over to another. In order to implement, two and four pages on a sheet, the program uses margins. When use print with either of those options, you may not set or reset any of the margins. For four-up printing, for the pages printed on the lower half the page, it uses a vertical motion to locate the first line. It is not permitted for the page being printed to use absolute vertical (row) addressing, however, relative addressing is permitted. It is permitted to push the cursor (LJ+) at the start of a page and pop it later in the page to return to the logical top of page. It would be bad form if the pushed position were not pop'ed somewhere before the end of the page. In order to handle the random page printing required by some options, the entire file will be read into memory before printing. This imposes a limit on file length. The program uses about 53K bytes in addition to that used by MSDos for code and data. The entire rest of memory is available and is allocated in chunks of 16384 bytes each. The input file must fit in the memory so allocated. Fairly large files are possible, but there is a limit depending on your memory size. Output Formats: There are twelve formats produced by the program. As they are combinations of three parameters, the description will be ordered by parameter. Single sided format is the simplest from one perspective. The file is printed in a single pass on one side of the paper. The user may request 1, 2, or 4 pages on each physical page. The option for 2 will be in landscape orientation, the others in portrait. Double sided format will print on both sides of the paper. The same options of 1, 2, or 4 pages per side of a sheet are available. The left page(s) on a side is the lower page number(s) than the right page(s). Similarly, the upper pages are lower page numbers than the lower pages. By default, if you staple (or use a hole punch) on the long left side of the sheet for portrait printing or the short left side for landscape, the pages are order so that you may use it as a book turning the pages. If the Z-fold option is used, you would staple or punch the paper on the top and turn the pages as with Z-folded paper. This might be used with 2-up program listing when put in a three- ring binder, the pages will be ordered properly. The booklet format is the most complex to explain. If only one page is printed on a side, it is identical with the double-sided format. When two pages are printed side by side in landscape format, the result may be stapled in the middle (the margin between the two pages) and folded as a booklet. It could also have been cut, folded over, and punched to fit in a binder. When 4 pages are printed on a side, the result should be cut between the upper pages and lower pages (as seen when the paper is in portrait orientation). Then the lower pages should be placed on top of the upper pages and stapled between left and right pages. This may then be folded into a booklet. It is probably easier to understand this after trying it. It would be well if on your first trial of a four-up booklet the pages were either numbered or you could easily tell their order. This would help a bit in verifying that you understand the instructions. Output Collation The program was written to work with a forward collator by default. If your printer does not have a forward collator, you may specify the reverse collator options. For single sided printing, the pages will be printed in reverse or and the resulting stack will be in the normally desired order. For the other two formats, the order of printing will be chosen so that the output of the second pass will be in the normally desired order. Soft Fonts: Soft fonts present no problems. However, one must NOT put the soft fonts in the file to be printed. There is no guarantee when any part of the file will be copied to the printer. Page allocation will not work properly. The proper action is to down load the fonts before hand using some other utility. Printer Selection: By default, the name PRN is used to access the printer. If your system uses a different name for the LJ, you may use the Command.Com command SET to set the parameter LJ to the name to use. For example: SET LJ=COM2 will cause the program to use COM2 for the printer. As a side effect, you may name a disc file in the SET command. If the file exists, it will be overwritten and if it does not, it will be created. Command Line Invocation: PR <filename> <type><args> <type> = S#-singlesided, D#-doublesided, B#-booklet # = 1, 2 or 4 pages/page <args> = L long paper(14"), T expand tabs C=# number of copies P=# maximum lines per page Z Z-fold - Reverse Collator U for USASCII or R8 for Roman-8 F=font type C Courier L Lineprinter T10 TimesRoman 10 T12 TimesRoman 12 T8 TimesRoman 8 H Helvetica 14.4 or F/<codes> If only the file name is specified, ie., no type or arguments, the type and arguments will be requested interactively as described later. If the type or any argument is specified, the defaults will be used for the rest. The default type is single sided with one logical page per sheet. The parameters may be separated by spaces or commas or semicolons (between the program name and the file name, you must use a space). All spaces, commas and semicolons will be ignored. The argument <type> must precede all other arguments and specifies the format as described earlier. The 'T' option will cause all tabs encounter to be expand as blanks. It will assume a tab stop at column 9, 17, and every 8 columns thereafter. The 'C' option, for example C=5, specifies the number of copies to make. It uses the LJ copies argument and does not make multiple passes. The 'P' option should be used ONLY if the pages are not defined by FF's in the file. When the indicated number of lines has occurred since the previous page break (whether caused by line count or FF), a page break is made. Z-fold was discussed under double sided output format above. The reverse collator '-' option was also discussed earlier. If an option is not specified, the defaults will be used for that option: 11" paper, no tab expansion, one copy, use FF's to define pages, not Z- folded, and forward collator. As was mentioned earlier, when each logical page is printed, the default font is selected. If none is specified, the Courier font of the proper orientation is selected with the Roman-8 character set. The U option may be used to select the USASCII character set. The font may be specified with a F= option specifying the type face and for TmsRmn, the point size. Another option allows the specification of the escape sequence to use. This option is specified as F/ followed by the sequence which is terminated by the end of the parameter list or another /. If another slash occurs, other arguments may follow. Since, esc characters cannot be easily entered in commands, the following procedure is used. Since all of the LJ escape sequences which may be used have an & or ( or ) or * as the second character and these characters do not occur within a valid escape sequence (binary types of escape sequences such as graphics or font definitions are not permitted in this context), whenever one of these four characters occur, an escape character is inserted before it. Interactive Arguments Specification: If the file name was not specified on the command line, it will be requested interactively. A full path name or a name relative to the current directory is permitted. If the file is not found, an error will be reported and you may re-enter the name. Entering a null line for the file name will terminate the program. This allows you to exit when you, for any reason, cannot enter the name of the file you want or change your mind. You will be asked for the value of each of the other parameters. The request will indicate, in parentheses, the default value. Pressing return will select the default value. Most parameters require only a single key stroke. If the question is a yes or no questions, type only Y or N. Do not enter the carriage return also. The use of upper or lower case is insignificant. Note that the Z-fold question is asked only if it is significant, ie., double sided. The questions asking the number of copies and the numbers of line on a page, if not defaulted, require a number to be entered and do require a carriage return to terminate. The default font question also may accept multiple characters and requires a carriage return. The default, Courier, is selected by entering only a return. The other fonts are selected by entering only their first letter. For TimesRoman, you will be asked for the font size in points. This response must have a carriage return also. If you elect to enter an escape sequence, it must begin with a slash and may be a full line long. A terminating slash is optional. By default, 6 lines per inch are selected on each page, unless the line printer font is selected, in which case it will be 8 lines per inch. You may override this is the escape sequence, but this will require you to use the escape sequence to select the font as well. Operation: Once the file name and arguments have been accepted, the program reads the file. While reading the file, it will display on the screen, the number of bytes read every time 16384 more bytes have been read. It will then allocate pages. You will see the page numbers being allocated displayed on the screen. Next comes the first pass of printing. It will print the back side of each sheet first (for single sided, it is the front side). While doing this the page numbers being printed will be displayed. For one-up printing, a single number is shown, for two-up the two pages side by side are shown, and for four-up, the four page numbers are shown as they are printed. For single and double sided printing, the same line is reused to display the page number for the next sheet. This is kind of a progress indicator. For booklet format, when more than one logical page is printed on a side, a new line is used for each sheet. This is because the page numbers are in a strange looking order and one could not judge the progress through the file if all of the numbers overwrote one another. For twosided or booklet printing, when the first pass is complete, you will be instructed to replace the paper in the printer. (Note: the printer will probably have a few sheets left to print after the instructions are displayed, wait until the form feed light is out) Be careful to replace it as instructed. The top of the page is the top as one would see it when reading the printing. You must always put the paper in the input tray with the printed side up. The printer prints on the side facing down in the supply tray. Do NOT rearrange the pages, they are in the correct order. The only exception is if you specified the reverse collator option backwards, you must arrange the sheets in the reverse order before replacing them. Pressing return on the keyboard will start the printing again. When the printing is done, you will be asked whether to reprint any pages. It is hoped that this will never be needed, however, it has been needed a few times. The major problem in printing on both sides is when a double feed occurs. If two sheets are feed as if they were one, the order of the sheets is disarranged thereafter. Rather than repeating the entire job, you may reprint the last portion of the job. The question is answered with a Y or N or return(means No). Do not enter a return after the Y or N. If Yes, you will be asked how many initial pages to skip. This is the number of physical sheets of paper which do NOT require reprinting. The printing will be repeated from that spot. If zero is entered, the entire document is reprinted. This is one way to obtain multiple copies which do not require further collation. In my experience, the double feed occurs most often if the paper has not been properly aligned in the input tray after it is replaced. Careful alignment of the sheets being replaced with each other and with any blank paper in the tray already reduces the chances of this problem. NOTE: In some cases, one more sheet will be printed for each copy in pass 2 than was printed in pass 1. In double sided printed with one logical page on a side, if there are an odd number of pages, this will occur. It will also occur in other situations of a similar nature. It will not occur when the reverse collator option is set. The program assumes that there will be blank paper available on pass two for the extra sheet. If there is not, the printer will stop with error code 11 and you must merely add paper and continue.