Educational Software Cooperative 4

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Educational Software Cooperative 4 / Educational Software Cooperative 4.iso / saver250 / saver.faq < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-12-09 | 13.7 KB | 282 lines

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Q: The Paper Saver does not wrap words around to the next printed line. Why not? A: The program will reformat your text files ONLY IF you let it. Should you select a file from the directory listing and The Paper Saver detects that it contains lines of text that are much longer than will fit on a single page, the program will prompt you if you wish to reformat the file. If you answer "Yes" to this prompt, the program will try to reformat the contents of your file. Don't worry...the original file is preserved. The reformatted file will be AUTOMATICALLY used when you start the actual print job. Q: I am using a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 540 printer, and I am trying to print using the condensed font in portrait mode. However, at various places on the printed output letters of text are chopped off and at other places lines of text are missing. The chopped off text looks as if the bottoms of the characters are missing. This chopped off text only occurs at the end of a printed line. This problem only occurs when using condensed font in portrait mode. The full height font, and landscape modes work great. What is causing this? A: When we first heard about this problem, we thought that the user had a bad printer cable. Only after we had another user report the same problem did we decide to do some investigation. It turns out that all these complaints were coming from owners of H/P DeskJet 540 printers. After notifying Hewlett-Packard's printer division, H/P admitted that there is a bug with the DeskJet 540's firmware when using half-height condensed Courier font in portrait mode. They have no "work-around", and since the DJ540 is no longer in production, they have no intent to correct the problem. In short, DJ540 owners must live with this glitch. It appears that H/P rewrote the firmware for their inkjet printers starting with the DJ540. This is why all previous models do not manifest this problem. H/P stated that their newer model 600 series printers has this bug corrected. Therefore, the only suggestion I have is to use condensed text only in landscape mode IF you own a DeskJet 540. Q: When I print a file with my Hewlett-Packard DeskJet the printed pages come out in reverse order, and I must therefore abort the print job. What is wrong? A: There is nothing wrong. The DeskJet series of printers will often begin printing with the last page of the document because The Paper Saver collates your print job. If you wait until the complete print job is complete you will be pleasantly surprised to find the page on the top of the printed stack will be page number 1! No re-shuffling of the stack is required. In order to have the last page print as page 1, the first page printed must be the last page. Don't panic early...The Paper Saver knows what it is doing. Q: In the dual column and quad page modes, some of the letters at the end of each line are printed missing. What is causing this? A: There is only so much room horizontally on each page to print text. If the file you are attempting to print has more than 78 horizontal characters per line, then you will lose some characters beyond column 78 in your file. One way to compensate for this is to strip the left margin of unnecessary blank spaces. From the "Configurations" menu you can strip leading spaces, or shrink the left margin to give you more breathing room along the right margin. If you have no left margin to shrink, and you can't afford to lose any characters along the right margin, consider switching to landscape mode, or consider doing away with dual column or quad page format. You can use a full page condensed print mode instead. Q: The Paper Saver locks up when I try to print Word Perfect document files. What is wrong? A: The Paper Saver works only with pure ASCII text files. Files saved by Word Perfect, Ami Pro, Microsoft Word, etc., are normally saved in binary format, and are not ASCII files. When you consider the literally dozens of proprietary file formats that exist, it would be a major task for The Paper Saver to be able to convert or read all of them. The Paper Saver only works with simple, plain ASCII text files. Neither does it print graphics. If you do have a Word Perfect file that you would like The Paper Saver to print, you must first save or export your Word Perfect, Ami Pro, etc. document as an ASCII text file. Q: When I print using any double-sided format, I receive a prompt window instructing me to remove the printed sheets and to reinsert the stack back into the printer's paper tray...while the printer is still printing! What's wrong? A: Nothing is wrong. The Paper Saver simply does not know how fast your printer is printing. Each printer has a buffer where data received from your computer is stored. Each printer's buffer memory size is different. The larger the buffer, the sooner you will receive a message prompt instructing you to reinsert your paper stack for the second pass of printing (double-sided mode only). You will have to keep your eye on your printer's panel "BUSY" light to know when it is time to reinsert the paper into your printer. Once the "BUSY" light goes off, your printer has finished printing the first side pass, and is ready to start printing on the reverse side. At this point, it is safe to remove the printed stack and reinsert it into your printer. Q: I own a laser printer and frequently The Paper Saver will eject an extra blank sheet at the beginning of the print job. What is wrong? A: More than likely your laser printer still had data in its memory leftover from a previous program. Laser printers retain data in its memory until it receives a form feed or reset command. An earlier program may have set your laser printer in landscape mode and failed to reset the printer upon exiting. The Paper Saver may find your laser in the wrong mode for your present print job request, and attempt to reset the printer for you. Often this results in a blank page being ejected from your printer. If this is something that occurs frequently, I would suggest that before using The Paper Saver on your laser printer that you either turn off the printer and turn it back on again or press the RESET button on your printer to clear its memory. Q: I am attempting to print a text file, but The Paper Saver informs me that the file is not an ASCII text file, and refuses to print the file. A: The Paper Saver expects a file to have no ASCII control characters from decimal 0-31. The only exception is the carriage return/line feed combo (decimal 13/10), which should appear at the end of each line of text. Often text files downloaded from a BBS or via the Internet will have line feed characters at the end of each line, but no carriage return characters. If carriage return characters (decimal 13) are missing from the file, then The Paper Saver will reject it, and refuse to print it. This does not happen very often, but if it does, the best solution is to load the file in your word processor, then export/save the file as a text file, then trying using The Paper Saver again to print the file. Q: There are strange characters appearing at the beginning and end of the printed output. What is wrong? By the way, this problems only occurs when I save files using Windows Write. A: Windows Write can save files in various formats. The most common and default format is the *.WRI format, which includes binary control codes at the head and tail of the file (and sometimes within the body of the file). These control codes are how Write knows what size font to display, whether to make words bold, margins, etc. These control codes only mean something to Windows Write. If you save your files in the *.WRI format, you will certainly receive strange characters in your output when using The Paper Saver. This is because *.WRI files are not pure ASCII .TXT files. If you want to solve this problem, save your Write files as *.TXT Text Files (use "File | Save As" from the Write Menu. One other problem that often comes up when printing files that originated from Windows Write... If the file was composed with word wrapping "ON", and the file then saved as a *.TXT Text File, the resulting file will contain extremely LONG lines of text. For example, if you composed a single paragraph in Write that contained 10 lines of text, and then save the file as a *.TXT file, the resulting file actually only contains ONE SUPER LONG LINE of text. WinWrite strips all carriage return/line feeds at the end of each line, resulting in one long line of of text. A file of this nature will also give The Paper Saver trouble UNLESS it is reformatted and broken down into smaller length multi-lines. One way to see what we are referring to is to reopen the *.TXT file using Windows Notepad. You will immediately see only the first part of each paragraph. What is the solution to these long lines that originate from WinWrite and similar programs? The Paper Saver will automatically detect lines that are too long and will prompt the user if you wish to have the file reformatted prior to printing (see earlier answer above). Q: The Paper Saver prints this one file correctly when I configure it to use my HP DeskJet printer with condensed mode, but when I use my laser printer (which emulates an HP LaserJet), the printed output truncates the end of each line. Why? A: The DeskJet series of printers have built into them a 20 characters per inch fixed font which is used in condensed mode output. Most laser printers, however, only a 16.67 or 15 characters per inch font as its smallest fixed font. As a result, the DeskJet printers can print more characters per line than a laser printer. This difference shows up as truncated lines (missing characters) when you print using a laser printer in condensed, dual column PORTRAIT format. The best solution to this problem is to switch to LANDSCAPE mode. Usually this gives the printer more room in order to print the wider characters when using a laser printer. Q: In the "Configuration options" menu you ask why the "Draft print: OFF" remains locked (i.e., the menu selection bar jumps over this option). A: The reason can be attributed to the fact that you have selected a laser printer for your default printer. 99.9% of all lasers ever produced do not have the capability to print in a "draft" mode. The "Draft print" is only accessible when you have selected the DeskJet inkjet printer as your default printer. The Hewlett-Packard DeskJet printers are the only printers supported by The Paper Saver capable of printing in a "draft" mode. Q: Sometimes when I change page layouts (e.g. landscape to portrait) and then print a file in a condensed font, the resulting output has the lines double spaced, and the dividing column line running down the center of the sheet is dashed, instead of solid. What is causing this problem? A: Make sure that you have not changed the "Lines per inch" configuration setting. The dual spacing between lines of text occurs when the vertical "Lines per inch" setting has been changed from its default value of 12 to 8. Q: How do you adjust the left margin, so that there is room to punch holes for a three-ring binder? A: You can adjust the left margin at which printing will begin by choosing "Left margin:" selection from the "Configuration Options" sub-menu. The value you enter represents the number of columns over from the left edge of the page at which printing will occur. Please be aware, however, that using a large "left margin" value will cause the text on the right hand side of the page to possibly be truncated. Q: Over here (outside of the United States) we use A4 paper, and our date format is "day-month-year". How do I change the program to support these formats? A: From the "Configuration Options" sub-menu, you can toggle between American and foreign paper sizes and date formats. Look for either | USA 8½" x 11" | or | A4 210mm x 297mm |. If the selection displays "USA...", then selecting this choice will change it to "A4". The date format also will change automatically when you do this.