Date   : Sun, 28 Nov 2004 12:31:57 +0000
From   : jgh@... (Jonathan Graham Harston)
Subject: Re: Printers

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?
 
> 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.
 
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"
 
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.
 
[1] Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. By spreading FUD you can persuade you
customers to beleive that they have to throw everything away as quickly as
possible and so repeatedly come back and give you money.
 
-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...                - mdfs.net/User/JGH
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