Date : Sun, 28 Nov 2004 08:22:45 EST
From : RWAPSoftware@...
Subject: Re: Printers
In a message dated 28/11/2004 13:09:19 GMT Standard Time,
jgh@... writes:
> Message-ID: <157.447bf1d9.2ed51dc7@...>
RWAPSoftware@... wrote:
> Just exactly what do people do if they want to print out from a BBC
> nowadays - most inkjets on the market will not work with plain text as
Don't they? Since when? Have you actually tried this, or have you just
beleive what some sales-bot has told you?
Yes I have tried it... Every new EPSON inkjet on the market (at least) no
longer support ESC/P2 control codes - they expect raster graphics only, unless
you buy the 1520 A3 wide printer !
Alas if you send them plain text, you will get no output whatsoever !
> they expect Windows to send them a graphics image....
A graphics image is a stream of text with a header telling the printer
that it is an image.
I've got a nice little laser printer plugged into my BBC here and it
prints nicely, thanks very much. Any printer, other than a direct drive
printer that does *not* print into a printer port, prints text. Anything
other than text is a special case of text. A postscript image is text that
looks like: %%PS\nImageBounds 4096,3200\nLinePoint 1530,1600,4,15......
An EPSON image is text that looks like: |[K5|Kej|M2s)J|Qk|Oes....
If you send the bytes &41, &42, &43, &44, &0D, &0A to *any* printer that
you can plug into a printer port, you will get "ABCD" printed on the
paper.
Not so I'm afraid - HP inkjets still seem to support plain text and quite a
few lasers still support an Epson ESC/P2 emulation mode. Fingers crossed HP
will continue to suppport it, cos I can't afford a colour laser printer.
I am fed up of FUD-merchants[1] saying "this is impossible..." when what
they mean is "I don't understand this, I want you to buy product X and
stop asking me things"
Oh, I understand it fully - have had to buy second hand inkjets for the past
5 years so I can continue to use an EPSON. I have tried output to more
modern printers (C44) and you just get nothing. EPSON tech support will
agree -
only the 1520 inkjet which will work.
Back when I worked at Wotfard I was instructed to tell people "you can't
use a 24-pin printer with a BBC". Yes you can! It's a printer! A
printer's a printer's a printer. If they had said "there are currently no
products that we know of for the BBC that drive a printer in graphics mode
utilising all 24 pins of a 24-pin printer", then *that* would have been a
truthful statement, but even then they were wrong as I had been using
programs since 1985 that would use all 24 pins of a 24-pin printer in
graphics mode.
Yes, a printer is a printer - just most printers now do not contain software
to handle plain text because they think that it will be handled by Windows.
Please don't wear blinkers unless you've tried - ask in a PC shop to try out
their printers on a Windows machine. If you go to a DOS prompt and enter
DIR c: >PRN this sends a plain text directory straight to the printer. It
works on an EPSON 850, but not many of the printers you find in a shop
nowadays....
--
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