home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Amiga Format CD 36
/
Amiga Format CD36 (1999-01-22)(Future Publishing)(GB)[!][issue 1999-02].iso
/
-seriously_amiga-
/
-commercial-
/
canondisk_v3.98d
/
docs
/
driverreadme.lzh
/
README
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1998-02-28
|
125KB
|
2,944 lines
COPYRIGHT
---------
THE CANON DISK AND THIS MANUAL IS COPYRIGHT 1992-98 BY WOLF FAUST.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS PRODUCT (CANONDISK) IS SUBJECT TO
PROPRIETY RIGHTS. YOU MAY NOT USE, COPY, OR TRANSFER THE PRODUCT,
OR ANY COPY OR PORTION, WITHOUT PRIOR CONSENT IN WRITING FROM
CANON EUROPE N.V. OR WOLF FAUST. ALL DISTRIBUTION- AND MARKETING
RIGHTS TO THE SOFTWARE (DRIVER) ARE VESTED IN CANON EUROPA N.V.
The Installer is Copyright 1991-1992 by Commodore-Amiga, Inc. All
Rights Reserved. Distributed under license from Commodore.
"More" is Copyright 1986-1993 Commodore-Amiga, Inc. All Rights
Reserved. Reproduced and distributed under license from
Commodore.
DISCLAIMER
----------
WOLF FAUST AND CANON MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESSED OR
IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE PROGRAM DESCRIBED HEREIN, ITS
QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR ANY
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THIS PROGRAM IS DISTRIBUTED ``AS IS''. THE
ENTIRE RISK AS TO ITS QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE IS WITH THE USER.
SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE FOLLOWING ITS PURCHASE, THE
USER (AND NOT WOLF FAUST, HIS DISTRIBUTORS OR HIS RETAILERS)
ASSUMES THE ENTIRE COST OF ALL NECESSARY REPAIR, CORRECTION, OR
SERVICING. IN NO EVENT WILL WOLF FAUST OR CANON BE LIABLE FOR
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR DAMAGES
RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE OR LOSS OF ANTICIPATED PROFITS
RESULTING FROM ANY DEFECT IN THE PROGRAM EVEN IF IT HAS BEEN
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. SOME LAWS DO NOT
ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR
LIABILITIES FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE
LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY.
INSTALLER SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "`AS-IS"' AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE; NO
WARRANTIES ARE MADE. ALL USE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO LIABILITY
OR RESPONSIBILITY IS ASSUMED.
THE MORE PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "`AS-IS"' AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE; NO
WARRANTIES ARE MADE. ALL USE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO LIABILITY
OR RESPONSIBILITY IS ASSUMED.
LICENSE
-------
``ENCLOSED PROGRAM'' SHALL BE TAKEN TO MEAN THE SOFTWARE ACTUALLY
CONTAINED IN THIS PACKAGE AND ANY SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS OR UPGRADES
RECEIVED AS A RESULT OF HAVING PURCHASED THIS PACKAGE.
YOU HAVE THE NON-EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE THE ENCLOSED PROGRAM ONLY
ON A SINGLE COMPUTER. YOU MAY PHYSICALLY TRANSFER THE PROGRAM
FROM ONE COMPUTER TO ANOTHER PROVIDED THAT THE PROGRAM IS USED ON
ONLY ONE COMPUTER AT A TIME. HOWEVER, YOU MAY NOT ELECTRONICALLY
TRANSFER THE PROGRAM FROM ONE COMPUTER TO ANOTHER OVER AN NETWORK.
YOU MAY NOT DISTRIBUTE COPIES OF THE PROGRAM OR THE ACCOMPANYING
DOCUMENTATION TO OTHERS EITHER FOR A FEE OR WITHOUT CHARGE. YOU
MAY NOT MODIFY OR TRANSLATE THE PROGRAM OR DOCUMENTATION. YOU MAY
NOT DISASSEMBLE THE PROGRAM OR ALLOW IT TO BE DISASSEMBLED INTO
ITS CONSTITUENT SOURCE CODES. YOUR USE OF THE PROGRAM INDICATES
YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. IF YOU DO NOT
AGREE TO THESE CONDITIONS RETURN THE PROGRAM, DOCUMENTATION, AND
ASSOCIATED PERIPHERALS TO THE VENDOR FROM WHOM THIS SOFTWARE WAS
PURCHASED.
SPECIFIC RESTRICTIONS
---------------------
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE COMPUTER SOFTWARE RENTAL ACT OF 1990, THIS
SOFTWARE MAY NOT BE RENTED, LENT OR LEASED.
THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION MAY NOT BE PROVIDED BY A
``BACKUP SERVICE'' OR ANY OTHER VENDOR WHICH DOES NOT PROVIDE AN
ORIGINAL PACKAGE AS COMPOSED BY CANON INCORPORATED INCLUDING BUT
NOT LIMITED TO ALL ORIGINAL DOCUMENTATION, INSERTIONS, AND
SOFTWARE.
ANY UNLAWFUL INFRINGEMENT UPON THESE COPYRIGHTS MAY RESULT IN
STATUTORY AND OTHER PUNITIVE DAMAGES.
Trademarks
-----------
Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.; Canon is
a registered trademark of Canon USA Inc.; Intellifont is a
registered trademark of Agfa Corporation (AGFA Compugraphic
Division);
All other trademarked products and company names used herein are
used for identification purposes only. No infringement of
trademarks is intended. Trademarks remain the property of the
trademark holder.
Support
-------
Wolf Faust can be reached for technical support via InterNet
(100116.1070@compuserve.com) and CompuServe (100116,1070). Please
speak to your printer dealer and Canon Hotline Service before
writing to Wolf Faust about problems with the software!.
Questions that are not directly related to problems with the
Software will not be answered. QUESTIONS WILL NOT BE ANSWERED
UNLESS POSTAGE IS PAYED BY YOU (NO CHEQUES/MONEY ORDERS
ACCEPTED!!) AND THERE IS NO GUARANTEE WOLF FAUST WILL ANSWER
(sorry, time is limited).
Wolf Faust can be reached at the following address:
Wolf Faust
Am Dorfgarten 10
60435 Frankfurt
Germany
If you are making a bug report, don't forget to include your phone
number and a REPORT disk (see error and fixes chapter at the end
of this readme file). And make sure you have gone through the
problems mentioned in the error chapter.
Welcome to the CanonDisk
------------------------
CanonDisk is software for controlling Canon printers with the
Commodore-Amiga personal computer with the purpose of creating
high quality output. The CanonDisk is divided into two parts, a
Canon driver and a Canon picture-printing program. CanonDisk's
main qualities include:
* Workbench printer drivers for all current BJ and BJC Canon printers.
The drivers have been designed specifically for each printer and
give several unique features.
* Setup software for the latest BJC printers.
* The BJ5-230 and BJC drivers support Canon's Extended Emulation
for faster and improved graphic output.
* Definable dither patterns including preset patterns.
* 16-point colour adjustment for each colour component. This
gives the user many features including gamma correction, and
contrast and brightness adjustment.
* Ink compensation for the correction of ink impurities.
* Workbench 2/3 graphical user interface (GUI).
* The Canon drivers can print up to 256 shades of grey from normal
Amiga applications. Standard Amiga drivers are limited to 16.
* Settings for page size, paper margins and the size of graphics
to be printed.
* Settings for built-in printer typefaces.
* The software is very fast and automatically uses improved
routines if the software is run on an Amiga with a 68020/30/40
CPU.
* Includes a very fast printer drivers for the PageStream DTP
package.
* font generation and automatic font download to the printer.
* Support for the Photo Ink and Drop Modulation Technique (DMT)
of the latest Canon printers.
* A limited working version of the CanonStudio graphic printing
program.
These are not the complete capabilities of the CanonDisk, merely
some of the highlights.
System Requirements
-------------------
CanonDisk is compatible with the entire family of Amiga computers.
These include the A500, A1000, A1200, A1500, A2000, A2500,
A2500/30, A3000 and A4000. CanonDisk was designed to run under
Workbench versions 2, 2.1, 3 and 3.1.
How CanonDisk Is Documented
---------------------------
CanonDisk is very easy to use, but you do require at least a
passing familiarity with general Amiga usage and practices. This
readme manual assumes that you have such a familiarity. If more
basic information is required about operating your Amiga than is
provided in this manual, please consult the introductory manuals
that came with your machine. We also strongly suggest that new
Amiga owners contact their local Amiga user groups for basic
training and help.
In order to produce the best product possible the manual is
routinely updated each time a new run is required. If you should
find any technical, typographical, grammatical or any other type
of error in your manual, please relay this information clearly to
the developer (address see above).
Thanks to...
------------
I have been assisted by testers and those who have sent money,
printer manuals and program suggestions. To all of you, I extend
my appreciation.
Because of their extra efforts I would like to thank following
people and companies:
Jeff Walker, the person who dragged me into the chaotic world of
writing printer software (bah!), and who proof read most parts of
this manual and re-worded parts of it.
Canon, surely the only printer manufacturer with major Amiga
development and support.
- Wolf Faust, December 1992.
The Workbench Printer Drivers
-----------------------------
After installing a Canon driver you should be able to print from
your normal application programs. In most cases you must further
adjust the driver settings to your printer to get the best printer
output possible. This chapter describes most of the functions for
controlling the Canon drivers. But before describing each driver,
here are some general things about printer drivers, and in
particular the Canon drivers.
GRAPHIC >--------------
|
|
\|/
-----------
TEXT >------> | Driver | >-------> PRINTER
-----------
/|\
|
|
|
Preferences
Printer drivers offer a way of sending configuration-independent
output to a printer attached to the Amiga. A driver can be
thought of as a filter that takes standard commands as input, and
translates them into commands understood by specific printers.
The commands sent to the printer via the prt: device are
standardized on all Amigas so that programmers only have to write
the software once and not for all possible printer emulations. It
is the task of the printer driver to translate an Amiga printer
command into the correct command for a particular printer. For
each type of printer in use, a printer driver (or a driver for a
compatible printer) should be present in the devs:printers
directory.
If you want to print text in bold, you have to decide whether to
use a standard Amiga command (also known as an escape sequence)
via prt:, or the command mentioned in your printer manual via
par:. Often people get confused about prt: and par:. Do not
send commands mentioned in your printer manual to prt:. This will
most likely fail, or cause wrong characters in your printer
output. You should use prt: as opposed to par: because commands
sent to prt: can be used on every printer, not just the kind of
printer you have. The par: device has even more shortcomings
than prt:, but we're not concerned with them in this manual.
An argument often used by programmers using par: is the unlimited
control over the printer. This is a fallacy. You can control
every printer feature via the prt: device.
The Canon Printer Drivers
-------------------------
The Canon printer drivers automatically check for the processor
being used (68000, 68010/68020, 68030, 68040) and optimize the
print routines accordingly, so there is no need for a special
`turbo' version of the driver in order to get the most out of your
Amiga.
The tables below show the graphics densities supported by all the
Canon drivers. Density is set in Workbench preferences. With
some programs you can also choose a density from within your
application program.
Beside the density tables, tables with all driver-supported Amiga
escape sequences (use prt: not par: for these commands) are
shown.
CanonBJ5-230 and CanonBJ300 Densities:
Density X dpi Y dpi Comment
1 180 180 No Color Adjustment/Custom Dither/...
2 360 360 No Color Adjustment/Custom Dither/...
3 360 180
4 120 360
5 180 360
6 240 360
7 360 360
CanonBJ-EC Densities (normal / BJC610 print densities):
Density X dpi Y dpi Comment
1 180/360 360/360 No Color Adjustment/Custom Dither/...
2 360/720 360/720 No Color Adjustment/Custom Dither/...
3 180/180 180/180
4 120/180 360/180
5 180/360 360/360
6 360/720 180/360
7 360/720 360/720
CanonBJ5-230 Commands:
Name Escape sequence Function Defined By
aRIS ESCc reset ISO
aRIN ESC#1 initialize Amiga
aIND ESCD lf ISO
aNEL ESCE return,lf ISO
aSGR0 ESC[0m normal char set ISO
aSGR4 ESC[4m underline on ISO
aSGR24 ESC[24m underline off ISO
aSGR1 ESC[1m boldface on ISO
aSGR22 ESC[22m boldface off ISO
aSHORP0 ESC[0w normal pitch DEC
aSHORP2 ESC[2w elite on DEC
aSHORP1 ESC[1w elite off DEC
aSHORP4 ESC[4w condensed fine on DEC
aSHORP3 ESC[3w condensed off DEC
aSHORP6 ESC[6w enlarged on DEC
aSHORP5 ESC[5w enlarged off DEC
aDEN6 ESC[6"z shadow print on DEC
aDEN5 ESC[5"z shadow print off DEC
aDEN4 ESC[4"z doublestrike on DEC
aDEN3 ESC[3"z doublestrike off DEC
aDEN2 ESC[2"z NLQ on DEC
aDEN1 ESC[1"z NLQ off DEC
aSUS2 ESC[2v superscript on Amiga
aSUS1 ESC[1v superscript off Amiga
aSUS4 ESC[4v subscript on Amiga
aSUS3 ESC[3v subscript off Amiga
aSUS0 ESC[0v normalize the line Amiga
aPLU ESCL partial line up ISO
aPLD ESCK partial line down ISO
aFNT0 ESC(B Typeface 0 (default): Courier DEC
aFNT1 ESC(R Typeface 1: Line Printer DEC
aPROP2 ESC[2p proportional on Amiga
aPROP1 ESC[1p proportional off Amiga
aVERP0 ESC[0z 1/8" line spacing Amiga
aVERP1 ESC[1z 1/6" line spacing Amiga
aSLPP ESC[nt set form length n DEC
aPERF ESC[nq perf skip n (n>0) Amiga
aPERF0 ESC[0q perf skip off Amiga
aSLRM ESC[Pn1;Pn2s L&R margin DEC
aCAM ESC#3 Clear margins Amiga
aTBC3 ESC[3g Clear all h tabs ISO
aTBC4 ESC[4g Clr all v tabs ISO
aTBCALL ESC#4 Clr all h & v tabs Amiga
aTBSALL ESC#5 Set default tabs Amiga
aRAW ESC[Pn"r Next 'Pn' chars are raw Amiga
CanonBJ300 Commands:
Name Escape sequence Function Defined By
aRIS ESCc reset ISO
aRIN ESC#1 initialize Amiga
aIND ESCD lf ISO
aNEL ESCE return,lf ISO
aSGR0 ESC[0m normal char set ISO
aSGR3 ESC[3m italics on ISO
aSGR23 ESC[23m italics off ISO
aSGR4 ESC[4m underline on ISO
aSGR24 ESC[24m underline off ISO
aSGR1 ESC[1m boldface on ISO
aSGR22 ESC[22m boldface off ISO
aSHORP0 ESC[0w normal pitch DEC
aSHORP2 ESC[2w elite on DEC
aSHORP1 ESC[1w elite off DEC
aSHORP4 ESC[4w condensed fine on DEC
aSGR0 ESC[0m normal char set ISO
aSGR3 ESC[3m italics on ISO
aSGR23 ESC[23m italics off ISO
aSGR4 ESC[4m underline on ISO
aSGR24 ESC[24m underline off ISO
aSGR1 ESC[1m boldface on ISO
aSGR22 ESC[22m boldface off ISO
aSHORP0 ESC[0w normal pitch DEC
aSHORP2 ESC[2w elite on DEC
aSHORP1 ESC[1w elite off DEC
aSHORP4 ESC[4w condensed fine on DEC
aFNT0 ESC(B typeface 0: Courier DEC
aFNT1 ESC(R typeface 1: Letter Gothic DEC
aFNT2 ESC(K typeface 2: Prestige DEC
aFNT3 ESC(A typeface 3: Script DEC
aFNT4 ESC(E typeface 4: Press Roman PSDEC
aFNT5 ESC(H typeface 5: OCR-A DEC
aFNT6 ESC(Y typeface 6: Olde World DEC
aFNT7 ESC(Z typeface 7: Prestige Symbol DEC
aFNT8 ESC(J typeface 8: Presentator DEC
aFNT9 ESC(6 typeface 9: Orator DEC
aFNT10 ESC(C typeface 10: Gothic SymbolDEC
aPROP2 ESC[2p proportional on Amiga
aPROP1 ESC[1p proportional off Amiga
aVERP0 ESC[0z 1/8" line spacing Amiga
aVERP1 ESC[1z 1/6" line spacing Amiga
aSLPP ESC[nt set form length n DEC
aPERF ESC[nq perf skip n (n>0) Amiga
aPERF0 ESC[0q perf skip off Amiga
aSLRM ESC[Pn1;Pn2s L&R margin DEC
aCAM ESC#3 Clear margins Amiga
aTBC3 ESC[3g Clear all h tabs ISO
aTBC4 ESC[4g Clr all v tabs ISO
aTBCALL ESC#4 Clr all h & v tabs Amiga
aTBSALL ESC#5 Set default tabs Amiga
aRAW ESC[Pn"r Next 'Pn' chars are raw Amiga
CanonBJ-EC Commands:
Name Escape sequence Function Defined By
aRIS ESCc reset ISO
aRIN ESC#1 initialize Amiga
aIND ESCD lf ISO
aNEL ESCE return,lf ISO
aSGR0 ESC[0m normal char set ISO
aSGR3 ESC[3m italics on ISO
aSGR23 ESC[23m italics off ISO
aSGR4 ESC[4m underline on ISO
aSGR24 ESC[24m underline off ISO
aSGR1 ESC[1m boldface on ISO
aSGR22 ESC[22m boldface off ISO
aSFC SGR30-39 set foreground color ISO
aSHORP0 ESC[0w normal pitch DEC
aSHORP2 ESC[2w elite on DEC
aSHORP1 ESC[1w elite off DEC
aSHORP4 ESC[4w condensed fine on DEC
aSHORP3 ESC[3w condensed off DEC
aSHORP6 ESC[6w enlarged on DEC
aSHORP5 ESC[5w enlarged off DEC
aDEN6 ESC[6"z shadow print on DEC
aDEN5 ESC[5"z shadow print off DEC
aDEN4 ESC[4"z doublestrike on DEC
aDEN3 ESC[3"z doublestrike off DEC
aDEN2 ESC[2"z NLQ on DEC
aDEN1 ESC[1"z NLQ off DEC
aSUS2 ESC[2v superscript on Amiga
aSUS1 ESC[1v superscript off Amiga
aSUS4 ESC[4v subscript on Amiga
aSUS3 ESC[3v subscript off Amiga
aSUS0 ESC[0v normalize the line Amiga
aPLU ESCL partial line up ISO
aPLD ESCK partial line down ISO
aFNT0 ESC(B Typeface 0 (default): Courier DEC
aFNT1 ESC(R Typeface 1 Sans Serif DEC
aFNT2 ESC(K Typeface 2 Roman DEC
aFNT3 ESC(A Typeface 3 DEC
aFNT4 ESC(E Typeface 4 DEC
aFNT5 ESC(H Typeface 5 DEC
aFNT6 ESC(Y Typeface 6 DEC
aFNT7 ESC(Z Typeface 7 DEC
aFNT8 ESC(J Typeface 8 DEC
aFNT9 ESC(6 Typeface 9 DEC
aFNT10 ESC(C Typeface 10 DEC
aPROP2 ESC[2p proportional on Amiga
aPROP1 ESC[1p proportional off Amiga
aJFY5 ESC[5 F auto left justify ISO
aJFY7 ESC[7 F auto right justify ISO
aJFY6 ESC[6 F auto full justify ISO
aJFY0 ESC[0 F auto justify off ISO
aJFY1 ESC[1 F word fill(auto center) ISO
aVERP0 ESC[0z 1/8" line spacing +++
aVERP1 ESC[1z 1/6" line spacing +++
aSLPP ESC[nt set form length n DEC
aPERF ESC[nq perf skip n (n>0) Amiga
aPERF0 ESC[0q perf skip off Amiga
aSLRM ESC[Pn1;Pn2s L&R margin DEC
aCAM ESC#3 Clear margins Amiga
aTBC3 ESC[3g Clear all h tabs ISO
aTBC4 ESC[4g Clr all v tabs ISO
aTBCALL ESC#4 Clr all h & v tabs Amiga
aTBSALL ESC#5 Set default tabs Amiga
aRAW ESC[Pn"r Next 'Pn' chars are raw Amiga
PageStream 2.x Printer Drivers
------------------------------
The CanonDisk includes special printer drivers for the PageStream
2.x desktop publishing program. These drivers offer major speed
improvement compared to the normal PageStream driver as they use
Canon's Extended emulation.
The installation of the PageStream drivers is performed by the
normal CanonDisk installation program. If you install a driver
for a printer which might also work with the Canon PageStream
drivers, the installation program will ask you whether you want to
install the Canon PageStream drivers or not.
The PageStream V2.x BJ2xx.printer driver supports the following
settings in the printer requesters special utility: letter,
legal, a4 and a3 (case is important!).
The PageStream V2.x CanonBJCx00.printer is installed for BJC
users. BJC 210,240,250 users should use the installed CanonBJC
800 driver.
The BJC driver supports the following settings in the printer
requesters special utility:
Paper sizes:
letter
legal
a4
a3
ledger
BJC800 print modes:
modea
modeb
modec
moded
modee
BJC6x0 print modes:
paper: COATED or OHP or PLAIN (default)
paper thickness: NORM (default) or THICK
% amount of black ink: BLACK100 (default) or BLACK200
print quality: GOOD or DRAFT or HIGH (default)
No BJC6x0 print mode will be defined, unless you use one of the
BJC6x0 options. For instance, you qant to print on normal DIN A4
paper as fast as possible, define "A4+PLAIN+DRAFT+NORM+BLACK100"
in the PageStream special gadget.
PageStream 3.x Printer Drivers
------------------------------
When using PageStream 3.x, you currently have to use the Workbench
driver from PageStream 3.x as the old Canon PageStream drivers
don't work with the new PageStream program. The quality and
features are far from being good. That's why a CanonStudio
PageStream 3.x driver was developed. With this driver you can
print from PageStream using CanonStudio with all it's features.
The driver currently works with the latest PageStream 3.1, 3.2 and
3.3 (and newer?) version and requires a registered CanonStudio
program or the Studio printing program. Users already owning reg.
CanonStudio or Studio can download the driver from AmiNet Internet
sites.
The SetupBJL Program
--------------------
For some Canon users a SetupBJL program is installed (by the time
of this writing: only for the Canon BJC 4xxx and BJC2xx). The
program SetupBJL may also be named SetupBJL-BJC4xxx or similar
identifying the printer to use with. The program can usually be
found in your systems Prefs drawer beside the drivers CanonPref
program. The SetupBJL program may be used by Canon BJ and BJC
users for controlling the printers permanent settings. It also
allows you to perform certain printer functions like test dumps
and ink head cleaning. The use of this program is very similar to
the MS-DOS or Windows program described in your printers user
manual or DOS print guide. This chapter will only cover the
additional Amiga specific functions of the setup software. See
your printer manuals for more details.
In most cases the printer is shipped to you by the manufacturer
already setup right for use with the Amiga. Anyway, if you start
SetupBJL for the first time, it's recommended to run the Setup For
Amiga/EU action first. This will setup the printer for you
automatically.
Please note: the default setup often sets the printer page length
to 22 inches in SetupBJL. This is NOT a bug and totaly correct as
this reflects the printers internal setting after a complete
reset.
SetupBJL can be started with various Tool Types or Shell
arguments:
USEPOWERON: If you specify this keyword, the SetupBJL program
will unghost the Auto On feature. Please note that this feature
should only be used with the new BJC 240, 4200 and 4550 and later
printers. When used with older printers like BJC 210 and BJC
4100, strange problems can arise (like being unable to turn off
the printer manualy). However, if you like, you can try the
feature with older printers... often it does work even on those
older printers fine. However, people wrote me lots of letters
because of this feature in the past, even though the docs told
about problems. So in order to make things safe, it's off by
default for those old printers.
PUBSCREEN: SetupBJL opens a window on the default public screen.
You may specify a special public screen by setting the Tool Type
"PUBSCREEN=screenname". The screen name is case sensitive. and
the SetupBJL program will open its windows on your application's
screen.
TOPAZ: SetupBJL is font independent. All text is displayed using
the system font. If TOPAZ is specified, only the topaz 8 font is
used.
SAVE: When using this option, SetupBJL will set-up the printer
without showing the set-up window first. This is useful for
controlling printer settings from batch files. You can enable
certain printer settings without user interaction by using the
FROM option in combination with SAVE. Settings can be saved from
SetupBJL by using the Save As menu item.
SetupBJL will automatically quit after 10 seconds if your printer
is off or not connected.
FROM: SetupBJL saves the settings sent to the printer in a file
named SetupBJL.prefs, placed in the same drawer as the SetupBJL
program. Next time you start SetupBJL, the current printer
settings are read from this file and displayed.
FROM allows you to specify a different settings file for reading.
You can save other settings files than SetupBJL.prefs using the
Save As menu item.
DEVICE: SetupBJL usually sets up the output device defined in
Workbench 2.04 printer preferences. Since Workbench 2.04, nearly
any output device can be defined in preferences for printer
output. Usually serial.device or parallel.device is used. You
may alter the device using the case sensitive DEVICE Tool Type or
Shell argument.
UNIT: Workbench 2.04 (or higher) Printer preferences programs may
enable you to specify a printer port unit to print to. Most of
the current multiport cards enable you to specify a port to print
to using a unit number (0 = internal port, 1 = external port A, 2
= external port B ...). Using the UNIT tool type or Shell keyword
you can define a unit (port) to print to.
POWEROFF: When using this option, SetupBJL will turn off the
printer without showing the set-up window first. This is useful
for controlling the printer from batch files. SetupBJL will
automatically quit after 10 seconds if your printer is already off
or not connected.
SetupBJL saves the settings sent to the printer in a file named
SetupBJL.prefs, placed in the same drawer as the SetupBJL program.
Next time you start SetupBJL, the current printer settings are
read from this file and displayed. This method works only so long
as SetupBJL is used for all printer setting changes and is not
moved to another directory without the SetupBJL.prefs file.
SetupBJL offers some printer functions and settings not available
in the MS DOS software:
Setup For Amiga/EU
This Printer Action function will setup the Canon printer for use
with the Canon Amiga Workbench driver. The setup is for use with
DIN A4 sized paper which is mainly used in Europe (EU).
Setup For Amiga/US
Same as Setup For Amiga/EU for use with US Letter sized paper.
Enable Hex Dump
This Printer Action will set the printer to hex dump mode.
Auto On
When enabled, the printer will automatically turn on if you try to
transfer data to the printer. The option is usefull in
combination with the Auto Off setting. It allows you to let the
printer automaticly turn itself on and off as needed.
Please note that turning on your computer can cause the printer to
go on too. This is a normal behaviour with Auto On enabled.
Turning your printer on and off too often is also no good idea.
The printer does consume a small amount of ink for a cleaning
procedure everytime it is turned on. It is recommended to use the
Auto Off feature with at least 10 minutes.
The Canon Preferences Programs
------------------------------
Apart from the functions mentioned in the section "The Canon
Printer Drivers", there are more utilities unique to the Canon
drivers. These utilities are managed using Commodore's standard
environment variables and can be controlled by using the Shell
setenv and getenv commands. As setting environment variables this
way can be a very complex task, a Canon preferences program is
available to make the job easier.
The CanonPref preferences programs provide an intuitive GUI and
requires at least Workbench 2.04 to run. The CanonPref
preferences programs can be controlled by the mouse and/or the
keyboard. Each gadget in the program can be operated by pressing
the underlined letter in the gadget. Pressing that letter is
equivalent to clicking on the gadget with the mouse. In the case
of a cycle gadget, you can use the upper case or lower case letter
to cycle back and forth. See your Amiga system manual on how to
control the filerequester by keyboard or mouse.
Following Canon preference editors are available on this CanonDisk
(from now on I will call them CanonPref programs):
Driver Preference Editor Setting file ENV:
------------------------------------------------------------------
CanonBJ300 CanonBJ300Pref CanonBJ300Pref
CanonBJ5-230 CanonBJ5-230Pref CanonBJ5-230Pref
CanonBJ-EC CanonBJECPref CanonBJECPref
All windows are opened directly under your mouse pointer, so you
do not have to move or scroll the screen to control the program.
All windows are opened on the default public screen. You may
specify a special public screen by setting the Tool Type
PUBSCREENscreen name The screen name is case sensitive. and the
CanonPref preferences program will open its windows on your
application's screen. If you run the preferences program from a
Shell You can specify a screen with the PUBSCREEN option:
CanonBJECPref PUBSCREEN screenname
For example, if you use the ASDG CEDPro text editor you may
specify CanonPref PUBSCREEN CygnusEdScreen1 and the CanonPref
preferences program will open its windows on the CEDPro screen.
Make sure the CEDPro screen is public before running the example.
You need at least CEDPro version 2.12 for this example.
All Canon programs are font independent, which means they use any
system font you have chosen in Workbench Font preferences for
displaying the text in gadgets and windows. You can force the
preferences programs to always use the topaz 8 font by defining a
TOPAZ Tool Type. This is the same as using a TOPAZ Shell
argument.
Similar to the preferences programs that comes with the Workbench
system, the USE, SAVE and FROM Shell arguments or Tool Types allow
switching between different driver settings. You can specify the
preference file to edit with the FROM argument. If you combine
FROM with the USE keyword the settings of the specified preference
file will become temporarily enabled. The preference program will
not show any user interface. SAVE is similar to USE except that
SAVE enables the settings permanently. SAVE may be used without
the FROM keyword in order to make temporary settings permanent.
You can save a driver preferences file using the Save As... menu
item in the preferences program. Preference files cannot be
exchanged between different drivers.
After starting a driver preferences program, the main window
opens. Now continue reading the chapter which discusses the
driver preferences program that has been installed by the
installation program. The name of the preference program is
displayed at the end of the installation and should have been
noted along with the driver name.
All CanonPref program are very similar. All utilities in the
CanonPref programs are described here in detail:
Emul.:
Print Mode:
-----------
Most new Canon printers do offer a so called "Extended Emulation".
This emulation is only supported by Canon printers. Using
Extended Emulation gives you much better and faster output on your
Canon printer. Many features of the Canon printers are only
available when using Extended Emulation: 720dpi graphics, Photo
Ink or Drop Modulation Technique (DMT) support, compressed
graphics. However, there are some important drawbacks you should
note in order to use the driver without any complications.
The main drawback is, that the Canon printer can't print text
using the printers internal fonts under Extended Emulation. So in
order to print text using the printers fonts, the driver has to
switch to the normal Epson emulation. This can only be done at
the beginning of a page. So you can't print text and graphics on
the same page, unless the text is also printed in graphics mode.
This is usually done by all major applications on the Amiga. So
with most applications you can use Extended Emulation without any
problems.
Until version V6 of the CanonBJ-EC driver, the user had to manualy
switch between Epson and Extended emulation using CanonBJECPref.
With the release of V6 this is no longer true. The CanonBJ-EC V6
driver is able to switch between Epson and Extended Emulation
automatically at the start of each page. So you can print a page
of graphics and the next page can be a page of text. The only
limitation caused by the printer is, that you can't have text and
(Extended) graphics on the same page. A page of graphics must be
ended by page ejection (ie. a Formfeed command - either sent by
the application or caused the driver itself). So the driver will
only switch back to Epson emulation after the page was ejected or
the printer device was freshly opened.
In practice, this means, you can print text using the printers
internal fonts from an editor, then print an image from a painting
program using Extended emulation. Then print text again. All
this is now done without requiring you to switch the printers
emulation manualy.
Important: note that only the new CanonBJ-EC V6 driver is able to
automatically switch the printers emulation as required. The
CanonBJ5-230 driver still needs to get switched manualy. So when
selecting the Canon Extended Emulation in the CanonBJPref program,
you can only print graphics using the driver once the printer was
switched to extended emulation. In order to print text using the
printers internal font again, you have to either switch back to BJ
emulation or flush the driver out of memory (which causes the
driver to reset the printer at the next use).
Now many users think the limitation introduced by the Extended
emulation is a problem for them. In practice, the limitation is
near to none-existent. For instance, when printing text from
programs like Final Writer, Wordworth, Professional Page and
PageStream, the printers internal font doesn't get used at all as
all text is printed using the printers (Extended) graphics mode.
So in practice, you should set the driver to Extended emulation
unless not already done for you by the installation procedure.
Sometimes the installation program does this for you. Sometimes
it leaves the printer to the normal Epson or BJ emulation in order
to make sure the driver is 100% compatible with Amiga
applications.
The Extended Emulation is enabled by the Emul. gadget in the main
window of the Canon preferences programs (CanonBJECPref,
CanonBJPref...). The Extended Emulations often also are described
as " Text OR Graphics" or "Graphics only" in order to reflect the
limitation of not being able to print text and graphics on the
same page. In case of "Graphics only" offered by the BJ drivers,
you must manualy switch emulations using the CanonPref programs.
Some emulations offer special print modes selected by the Mode
gadget below the Emul gadget. Here are the main differences
between the various emulations and print modes supported:
Epson24 / BJ printers
This emulation can be used with most currently available 24-pin
printers. The emulation supports printing text and graphics. Two
passes of the printer head are needed for printing one line of
graphics at 360 vertical dpi. The emulation is also supported by
BJ printers with Epson emulation.
Epson48 / BJC printers
This emulation is the driver's default setting. The emulation
supports printing text and graphics on the same page. The
emulation is not supported by most BJ printers. The emulation is
able to print 48 dots per printer line in 360 dpi resolution,
enabling the printing of high density graphics in one pass per
line.
This emulation is the default for most BJC printers after
installation. This emulation was choosen in order to make the
driver as compatible as possible with all Amiga applications. It
definitly is not what is best in 99.9% of all users. So it is
highly recommend you try the Extended Emulation of your printer
described below if possible.
Note that BJC 210, 240 and 250 can't print color graphics using
the Epson emulation. In order to print color, you must set the
driver to extended emulation.
BJ 200/230 Text OR Graphics
BJ 200ex Text OR Graphics
This emulation does not support printing text when used with the
CanonBJ5-230 driver. Graphic printing is accomplished using the
printer's extended emulation. The emulation is for use with
BJ100, BJ-200, 200e, 200ex and BJ-230 printers only. The
emulation supports printing up to 64 dots per printer line.
Compression is used by the driver to speed up transfer of data to
the printer. The 200ex mode also allows you to define the print
mode of the printer. Use the print mode gadget for this.
BJC 210 Text OR Graphics
BJC 240 Text OR Graphics
BJC 250 Text OR Graphics
This Extended emulation should be used with Canon BJC 2xx
printers. As described above, you can't print graphics and text
using the printers internal font on the same page. Different to
the Epson emulations, the BJC 2xx extended emulation supports
printing color graphics. Extended emulation also supports the
Photo Ink cartridge of the BJC 240 and 250.
A special note is needed for the new V6 drivers Photo Ink support:
In order to print using the Photo Ink feature, you must use
Extended emulation. Set the print mode to "Photo Ink" using the
Mode gadget. This will cause the driver to switch to Photo Ink
routines. Note you MUST HAVE A PHOTO INK CARTRIDGE in your
printer in order to use this print mode. Similar to switching
resolution, the Photo Ink mode does require you to adjust the
colors of the driver for this print mode. This can easily be
achived using the CanonBJECPref's "Preset" menu.
Please note that the current color preset for Photo Ink on the BJC
240/250 is only of limited quality on the BJC 240/250. This is a
result of the color correction peformed by driver not being able
to do the perfect color correction required by the Photo Ink
cartridge.
Thus it is highly recommended to USE CANONSTUDIO FOR PHOTO INK.
The registered verion of CanonStudio comes with a color management
able to deal with all color problems associated with the BJC 240
Photo Ink cartridge.
Most of the changes done in the CanonBJ-EC driver V6 have been
made in order to built in the color correction of CanonStudio in
the future. So please, use CanonStudio for good quality Photo Ink
output or try editing the color adjustment of the driver until an
improved CanonBJ-EC driver is released.
For more info on Photo Ink usage see the "BJC 4000 Text OR
Graphics" item below.
BJC 600(e) Text OR Graphics
This Extended emulation should be used with Canon BJC 600 and 600e
printers. As described above, you can't print graphics and text
using the printers internal font on the same page. Different to
the Epson emulations, the BJC 600 extended emulation supports
printing up to 64 dots per line.
When using the Canon BJC emulation you are able to define the
print mode or method. For the BJC-600 you can choose various
paper types (normal/plain, coated, back print film and
transparency/OHP), paper thickness (normal, thick) and print
quality (enhanced black, high speed, high quality). The print
quality and paper type setting has a major influence on the
printed speed.
BJC 610, 620 Text OR Graphics
This Extended emulation should be used with Canon BJC 610 and 620
printers. As described above, you can't print graphics and text
using the printers internal font on the same page. Different to
the Epson emulations, the extended emulation supports printing up
to 64 dots per line and 720dpi on these BJC printers.
When using the BJC 610/620 extended emulation you are able to
define the print mode and method. You can choose various paper
types (normal/plain, coated, back print film and
transparency/OHP). The paper type setting has a major influence
on the printed speed and quality.
Please note that as soon as you select 720dpi for printing, you
usually have to adjust the colors of the output. You can use the
Preset menu of CanonBJECPref for this. It offers a color preset
for the BJC and various paper types.
BJC 800 Extended Emulation
This Extended emulation should be used with Canon BJC 800 and 820
printers. As described above, you can't print graphics and text
using the printers internal font on the same page. Different to
the Epson emulations, the extended emulation allows control over
the print mode used. The print mode set by the printer panel is
overridden. Please see your BJC-800/820 printer manual for more
information about each print mode offered. For the best quality
select print mode A.
BJC 80 Text OR Graphics
BJC 70/BJ 30 Text OR Graphics
BJC 4000 Text OR Graphics
BJC 4100 Text OR Graphics
BJC 4200 Text OR Graphics
BJC 4300 Text OR Graphics
BJC 4550 Text OR Graphics
BJC 4650 Text OR Graphics
As described above, you can't print graphics and text using the
printers internal font on the same page when using these Extended
emulation settings. Different to the Epson emulations, the BJC
Extended emulations support printing up to 128 dots per printer
line (BC 20 cartridge with BJC).
With the Extended emulation enabled, you can define various print
modes or paper types using the Mode gadget in CanonBJECPref.
Printing with resolutions higher than 360 dpi or using special
features like Photo Ink or Drop Modulation Technique (DMT) are
only possible when using the Extended emulation of your printer.
Important: when switching the print mode or print resoltion, you
most likely have to adjust the colors for the printing. If not,
your output might be much too dark, bright or muddy. You can use
the Preset menu of CanonBJECPref for this. It offers a color
preset for the BJC 4xxx and 720*360dpi on various xerox paper and
more.
A special note is needed in case you do want to use a Photo Ink
cartridge with your printer:
Set the print mode to "Photo Ink" using the Mode gadget. This
will cause the driver to switch to Photo Ink routines. Note you
MUST HAVE A PHOTO INK CARTRIDGE in your printer in order to use
this print mode. Similar to switching resolution, the Photo Ink
mode does require you to adjust the colors of the driver for this
print mode. This can easily be achived using the CanonBJECPref's
"Preset" menu.
Here some general info on Photo Ink usage with the CanonBJ-EC
driver:
The Canon Photo Ink cartidges do allow the printer to print
multiple shades per color for each addressable printer dot. As a
result, the printer can print 64 colors instead of the usual 8
colors by most color printers. In order to make use of the 64
shades, the driver has to use a completly different dithering
routine, which is more complex and thus needs more time. It also
becomes clear, that if you want to use the Photo Ink cartridges 64
colors, the driver must get 64 or more colors by the application.
For instance, printing black text with the Photo Ink cartridge is
not a good idea as you can print sharper full black characters
with the normal print head. Of course, you can use the Photo Ink
cartridge for this, but the quality is lower, the ink is more
expensive and you have to wait longer for the printer.
Another bad idea is using an Amiga application for printing that
doesn't send shades. For instance CanonStudio's Workbench output
module, Art Department Professional's PrefPrinter saver,
TruePrint24 and PageStream V2.x only send already binary dithered
data to the driver. Binary dithered means, the driver only gets
On/Off info for each printer dot and no shades. Thus you don't
make use of the Photo Ink's capability for shades. With those
applications, you are better off using the normal print head.
Please note that the registered version of CanonStudio or the
commercial Studio software comes with special output modules for
the Canon printers offering Photo Ink support directly.
In order to not increase the driver size to 100 KByte because of
the large size of each Photo Ink dither routine, the normal
CanonBJ-EC Driver does not offer all dither routines selectable in
CanonBJECPref. The driver will automatically switch to Blue Noise
30% Dithering for all error diffusion dither routines. If you did
select Floyd Steinberg dithering, the driver will switch to Blue
Noise 30% if you select Photo Ink. Please note we are planning to
release the driver with all dither routines available for Photo
Ink via CompuServe and AmiNet. But the driver distributed by
Canon on disk won't offer these dither routines as the driver
wouldn't fit on the disk. If you don't know which type of driver
you got, simply check the file site of the CanonBJ-EC driver in
the devs:printers drawer. If the driver is bigger than 60KByte,
than you most likely have the driver with all dithers available
with Photo Ink.
Smooth:
-------
The Smooth gadget is only available with certain Extended
emulations enabled. The smooth mode only works when printing in
grayscale mode. On a BJC-4000 it even only works with the BJ 20
b/w cartridge and a BJC 70 (ie. BJ 30) with the b/w only
cartridge. When smoothing is enabled, the printer refines your
printout by polishing away jagged edges and ragged stair-stepping
curves of graphics. This results in sharp and crisp printout at
720 (horizontal) by 360 (vertical) dots per inch. Note that
printing speed is affected by smoothing. The printer's smooth dip
switch setting does not affect printing in BJC emulation.
Color Mode (Supergrey):
------------------------
Normal Workbench printer drivers are limited to 16 shades of grey.
After brightening the graphics output, even fewer shades are
available. Canon drivers do not have this limitation and can
print colour pictures in up to 256 shades of grey using the
Workbench color output mode. Some Canon drivers provide a
Supergrey gadget allowing you to switch between real color output
and Supergrey mode. This gadget is not needed by b/w BJ drivers.
With Supergrey enabled, every colour picture will be printed as a
greyscale picture if you select colour instead of greyscale as the
graphics output mode. With Supergrey it is the printer driver's
task to convert the colour data into greyscale data. While this
can be done by the printer device instead of the printer driver
(as normal Workbench drivers do), the Canon printer driver
colour-to-greyscale conversion routines are more precise. Because
of this you can print a 4096 colour HAM picture in up to 256
shades of grey instead of the normal 16 shades. Supergrey will
replace the normal colour dump of the driver.
If you want to print more than 16 shades of grey (and that's what
Supergrey is all about!) you must define a custom dither matrix in
the CanonPref program that enables you to print more than 16
shades. Defining a dither matrix using CanonPref is described
later.
Supergrey works with nearly every Amiga application simply by
printing in Workbench's colour mode, even if your printer isn't a
colour printer. Application programs that provide their own
dither routines should not be used with Canon's custom dither
routines, and because of this should not be used with Supergrey .
Programs with custom dither routines include Art Department
Professional's PrefPrinter saver, TruePrint24 and PageStream V2.x
(not V3!). The CanonStudio picture-printing program also belongs
to this category of programs, but it automatically detects whether
you are printing in Supergrey or colour. The CanonStudio program
automatically prints pictures as greyscales if Supergrey is
enabled.
Supergrey can be disabled in several ways. Take care that none of
the following special cases are in effect if you want to print
pictures using Supergrey:
* Canon's custom dither and colour correction routines can be
turned off by printing with a Workbench density below 3. Because
of this, Supergrey works only with graphics densities above 2.
* With the exception of the new CanonBJ-EC V6 driver, the custom
dither and colour correction routines can be turned off by
printing with a Workbench dither method other than ordered.
Because of this, Supergrey works only with the ordered dither
routine set in Workbench preferences. This does not mean that you
cannot print a halftone dither with Supergrey . You just have to
use the Canon dither routines set in CanonPref instead of the
dither routines set in Workbench preferences, because only the
Canon dither routines offer more than 16 shades of grey.
* Supergrey can always be turned off using CanonPref.
Table below shows all parameters that must be enabled for printing
with Supergrey:
Function Density Workbench-Dither
(except CanonBJ-EC V6)
Supergrey >2 Ordered
In Compensation >2 Ordered
Color Adjustment >2 Ordered
Custom Dither >2 Ordered
Note: the number of printable shades of greys in Supergrey
depends on the number of shades supported by the dither method set
in CanonPref. Up to 256 shades are possible, and supported by the
Canon dither routines. Often a dither method that produces 64
shades of grey gives the best results.
Separation:
-----------
You may print separations with the help of the separation utility
in the upper right half of the window. Each primary colour that
is checkmarked will be printed (C=cyan, M=magenta, Y=yellow,
K=black). An example of the use of the separation function can be
found in the tips and tricks chapter.
Mirror:
-------
If set to on (with a checkmark), graphics will be mirrored;
especially useful if you want to print pictures intended for
T-shirt art.
LineFeed:
---------
This feature only available on some BJ drivers - not on the
CanonBJ-EC driver: Many printers exibit 'banding' unwanted
horizontal stripes when printing graphics. This is often caused
by mechanical inaccuracies in linefeeding - either slightly too
much or too little, causing dark or white horizontal lines.
LineFeed gadget allows you to adjust the driver to the mechanical
inaccuracy of the printer. Set LineFeed to -1 if you have white
lines in the output, or +1 if you have dark lines.
Textcolor:
----------
With the Textcolor cycle gadget you may choose the default text
colour for the printer.
Typeface:
---------
The Typeface gadget allows you to define the printer's typeface
(or `font') selected by the aFNT0 (see the command tables above).
The typeface selected with aFNT0 is your default typeface.
Font Download:
--------------
If you enable this function (checkmark on), the CanonBJ5-230
driver will automatically download fonts created by you or the
FontShop program. In the event that you don't need the download
feature, you can disable this feature without deleting or moving
the font files.
Timeout:
--------
Most people know the "Printer trouble..." requester well. This
system requester most often appears when you print a document that
is several pages long. The requester is caused by the computer
not transferring waiting data to the printer for a period of time
(usually 30 seconds). If there is a `timeout' the printer device
assumes an error and the requester appears. A timeout may also
appear without a real error happening if your printer is waiting
for (or slowly feeding in) a new sheet of paper, for example.
This operation often needs more than 30 seconds, and during this
time no data is accepted by the printer.
With Timeout you can specify a higher timeout value, resulting in
fewer timeout requesters. A value from 1 to 999 seconds is
allowed (default 30 seconds).
Instead of defining a huge timeout value there is another solution
available: use the CMD program (see your Workbench disk) to
redirect the parallel/serial output to a file on disk. After
this, use the Copy command or a printer spooler to copy the file
to par: . This technique may also result in a better output
quality, especially with inkjet printers. Note: If there is a
real timeout error you will have to wait the number of seconds
specified by Timeout until an error requester appears, thus
allowing you to cancel the print job. So choose your Timeout
value wisely.
Job End:
--------
If the printer device closes after a dump, you can tell the driver
to signal the end of the print job. This is especially useful on
huge graphic dumps which might require some time. There are two
kinds of signals. You can cause a beep (Ctrl-G) on the printer, a
DisplayBeep on the Amiga, or both.
arXon Port:
-----------
All Canon drivers support the arXon parallel switch-box, an
external 1 to 3 Centronics switch controllable by software. You
can ask the printer driver to automatically switch to the required
port for printing, and switch back to the previously used port
after printing. This enables you to use a scanner, a digitizer
and a printer from your Amiga's parallel port without having to
switch between the devices manually. If you specify Default as
the port, no switching will take place.
Information about the arXon switch-box may be obtained from:
arXon GmbH
Assenheimer Str. 17
D-60489 Frankfurt
Germany
Tel: 069-987410-26
Fax: 069-987410-30
The environment variable "sbox_active" must be specified before
using the driver in order to enable the switch-box feature of the
driver. This is because "sbox_active" is used to determine
whether a switch-box is installed or not. "sbox_active" is
defined by the arXon software.
Save:
-----
You may leave the CanonPref by clicking on the "Save" gadget.
Changes made to the settings will be saved for permanent use.
Use:
----
You may leave the CanonPref preferences program by clicking on the
"Use" gadget. Changes made to the settings will be saved
temporarily and will stay active until you reboot the computer or
change the settings using CanonPref again.
Cancel:
-------
You may leave the CanonPref preferences program by clicking on the
"Cancel" gadget. Changes made to the settings will not be
recognised or saved.
More control windows
--------------------
There are four utilities in the bottom half of the main CanonPref
window. The ellipsis (three dots) in these icons means that
another window will be opened when you select the utility. Here
is a detailed description of each of the four windows.
"Customize Tabulators...":
--------------------------
The gadgets in this window lets you customize the horizontal tab
stop settings of your printer, useful for printing program
listings and tables. Up to 32 tab stops may be defined with the
Canon BJ-EC driver (BJ mode drivers normally allow up to 28 tab
stops). All tab stops above the limit of 32 (28) are ignored, and
a requester will tell you so. Horizontal tabs are usually
selected and stored by the printer in characters, not inches.
Thus, any change in the character spacing can change the physical
locations of horizontal tabs, but the logical positions remain
unchanged.
You can set or unset a tab stop by clicking on the gadget at the
required position. A "T" is used for a tab stop. The "-" and "+"
characters are used to help you find the correct position. Using
the slider below the gadget you can scroll the `tab stops' slide
to the required position.
Clear Tabs:
-----------
With Clear Tabs you can clear all tab stops.
Set every n chars:
------------------
With the n: and Set every n chars gadget you can easily set tab
stops with the same distance. Simply enter the distance into the
"n:" integer gadget and select "Set every n chars".
Note: the printer driver uses a default distance of eight
characters. If you want to reset your customized tabs stops
settings to the printer default values, simply call up "Customize
Tabs..." and the window will open with a default n: value of 8.
Press "Set every n chars" to select the default value.
Use:
Cancel:
-------
You can leave the window with the "Use" or "Cancel" gadget.
Changes made to the tab stops settings are accepted with Use.
Cancel leaves the tab stops unchanged, and any changes made will
be lost.
Note: Use does not save the changes made to your environment.
This is done by using the Use or Save gadget in the main window.
"Page Size and Margins..."
--------------------------
The gadgets in this window let you customize the paper size and
margins. This window contains many additional settings that are
unknown to most normal printer drivers.
Enable Form:
------------
If Enable Form is checkmarked, page length (as set in Workbench
preferences), Top Margin and Perforation Skip will be enabled by
the driver. In order to stay compatible with normal Workbench
printer drivers, the default settings are not used. Some
applications require well-defined paper sizes and margins for
printing forms. The Canon driver provides you with these
facilities by checkmarking Enable Form. It may require some
experimentation (and paper) until you have found the correct
values for a specific application.
In order to print DIN A3 on printers like the BJ 230/330, BJC
800/4550/4650 it sometimes is necessary to define a page size
using the Canon prefernces program. In this case the Enable Form
gadget must be enabled and the page length must be defined in the
Workbench "Printer" preferences program.
Example:
In order to print DIN A3 on a BJC 800 you turn on "Enable Form".
Than set the Workbench Printer prefences to Wide Tractor (in case
DIN A3 is not already offered). You than define a page length as
required by your printer for DIN A3. The page length amount can
also be automatically calculated if you use the CanonBJ-EC driver.
In this case set Page Length to 250 lines and the driver
automaticly adjust the page length to the the Paper Size selected
in Printer preferences.
Top Margin:
-----------
This setting is not available on some drivers (CanonBJ-EC doesn't
support it). Top Margin specifies the top margin as a number of
lines. The top margin defines the vertical distance between the
top of the printable area of the page and the the first line of
text on the page. Using this gadget, together with the preference
settings for left margin, right margin and page length, you have
total freedom to define the margins of a page. Using the default
value of zero disables the Top Margin function. The Top Margin is
only enabled if Enable Form is checkmarked.
Perforation Skip:
-----------------
Perforation Skip specifies the number of lines that the printer
skips over at the end of each page. This causes the printer to
skip the perforation between pages of continuous forms. If zero
lines is specified, perforation skip will be disabled. If the
specified value is greater than or equal to the form length (as
defined in the Workbench preferences program), the skip
perforation is cancelled and the top and bottom margins become
inactive. The Perforation Skip is only enabled if Enable Form is
checkmarked.
Page Length:
------------
Paper Length is a read-only gadget showing the paper length as
defined in Workbench preferences. You can use the value as a
guide to setting your perforation skip and top margin values.
Changes made to the paper length preferences are automatically
detected by the CanonPref program, and the gadget is updated
immediately without the need for exiting CanonPref. The Paper
Length is only enabled if Enable Form is checkmarked.
Custom ResX:
Custom ResY:
------------
If the selected paper format in preferences (Workbench 2.0:
"Printer") is CUSTOM , this gadget allows you to specify the width
of the printable area of paper in inch wide dots (LBP uses inch) .
The size is used only for graphic prints and does not affect text
printouts. For example, if you are using Workbench 1.3 (which
doesn't have a DIN A4 option) you can specify an X resolution of
2804 1/360 inch dots (19.78cm, 7.8in), which is equal to the DIN
A4 size used by most Commodore printer drivers. If you specify
zero (the default) as the X resolution, the US-LETTER resolution
of 2880 dots (20.3cm, 8in) will be used. The allowed range is 0
to 65535 dots.
Different to the BJ300 driver, the CanonBJ5-230 driver use Custom
ResX for defining the paper size including unprintable margins
(0.5 inch).
Similar to Custom ResX, Custom ResY defines the height of the
printable paper size.
Use:
Cancel:
-------
You can leave the window with the Use or Cancel gadget. Changes
made to the settings are accepted with Use . Cancel leaves the
settings unchanged and any changes made will be lost.
Note: Use does not save the changes made to your environment.
This is done by using the Use or Save gadget in the main window.
Color Adjustments...
--------------------
First an important note before we go on in this chapter:
IMPORTANT
---------
Please note that a Canon driver behaves like a stupid driver if
you select a density below 3 for printing. This means, the driver
doesn't use any color correction, ink compenstion or even advanced
dithering. Disabling the drivers advanced routines by using the
density setting is a common way to make the driver not interfere
with applications having their own routines (Art Department
Professional's PrefPrinter saver, TruePrint24 and PageStream V2.x
(not V3). Use density 1 or 2 when printing with these programs.
The CanonsStudio picture-printing program also belongs to this
category of programs, but it automatically disables the
CanonStudio driver's colour adjustment routines.)
On all drivers except the CanonBJ-EC driver V6 (and later) the
advanced routines are also turned off if the user selects a dither
method other than ordered in the Workbench preferences program or
the used application (which does override the Workbench
preferences with the selected setting).
Now we continue with the chapter:
The gadgets in the "Color Adjustments..." window enable you to
make colour adjustments and compensate for ink impurities. But
why are colour adjustments and ink compensation needed?
* Most colour printer users will have come across the problem of
graphic prints being too dark, or the output containing too much
red. Using the colour adjustment you can easily correct this.
* The output quality of printers depends ultimately on the ink and
type of paper being used. Inkjet printers are very sensitive to
the type of paper used. Using the colour adjustment you can
easily alter the driver to various ink and paper types.
* The colour adjustment allows you to do image processing by
controlling the contrast, gamma correction and brightness of each
primary print colour. You can even filter out unwanted colours.
* Printer inks are not completely pure materials. For example
there is some yellow mixed into the magenta ink, and there is some
magenta in the cyan ink. The ink compensation values will correct
for these impurities allowing blues, for example, to be printed as
blues rather than purples.
Colour adjustment is only one of several processes needed for
printing graphics. You can control the graphics output of the
Canon drivers for each of these processes.
Before the printer driver can process a picture for printing, it
must separat it into its primary printing colours. Each primary
printing colour can be adjusted by the Canon printer driver using
16 sliders which describe a conversion function. Colour
adjustment is needed because the colour values displayed on
computer monitors and the colours printed by printers are
different. A bright red on the monitor, for example, usually is
printed as dark red; blue is often printed as violet; and the
printer output is often too dark.
Most printers cannot print two adjacent dots without overlapping
them slightly. This problem is known as `dot gain' Dot gain ,
causing muddy and dark output. You can avoid dot gain problems by
printing with a lower resolution (for instance 180 dpi on a 360
dpi printer) or by using a special dither matrix and colour
adjustment which is not affected by dot gain problems.
You can control the colour adjustment sliders in several ways.
There are three sliders in the upper right half of the Color
Adjustments... window. These provide global control over all 16
sliders that describe the conversion function.
Brightness:
-----------
The brightness adjustment globally modifies the general brightness
of a colour component. It does this by uniformly shifting the
colour map upwards or downwards. All input intensities of one
primary printing colour will be shifted upwards (made brighter) by
the colour map. If you brighten all the primary printing colours,
the whole picture becomes brighter.
The brightness adjustment is not without its drawbacks. Notice
that the darkest input value (bottom left) is brightened, leaving
no darker colours for printing. This means that the darkest
intensity in the image will also be brightened, which may not be
acceptable. Also note that most of the brighter levels now have
exactly the same intensity levels, meaning that all details which
had intensity levels in that range are lost. The brightness
control in CanonPref ranges from -50 to 50, with zero being the
neutral value. Setting the brightness control to a positive value
uniformly shifts the colour map upwards, towards a brighter colour
component. Similarly, a negative value causes the colour to be
shifted towards darkness.
Contrast:
---------
The contrast adjustment globally modifies the general contrast of
a colour component. Contrast adjustments can be visualized by
thinking of the neutral colour map being pivoted around its centre
point. At one extreme the colour map becomes flat, which means
that all input intensities map to the same output intensity (no
contrast). The other extreme is a vertical line for a colour map,
which produces a primary colour with exactly two intensities
(maximum contrast).
Notice again that contrast loses some amount of visual detail,
just as the brightness adjustment does. This may or may not be
acceptable for any given image.
The contrast control in CanonPref ranges from -50 to 50, with zero
being the neutral value. Setting the contrast control to a
positive value uniformly pivots the colour map around its centre
in an anti-clockwise direction (towards the vertical), which
increases visible contrast.
Gamma:
------
The gamma adjustment provides a way to significantly brighten a
colour component without losing that much detail. It does this by
introducing a curve into the colour map, whereby the colour map is
shifted upwards or downwards (made brighter or darker
respectively) but no portion of the colour map gets clipped to the
maximum or minimum values.
The gamma adjustment also affects the contrast of the colour
component. In the darker part of the spectrum contrast is
increased; in the lighter part of the spectrum contrast is
decreased.
The gamma control in CanonPref ranges from -50 to 50, where zero
represents no gamma adjustment. The overall effect of gamma
adjustment is usually quite satisfactory and we recommend its
liberal use. There are several reasons for this. The gamma
function provides an easy way to brighten a picture without losing
detail. Also, monitor tubes show a computer picture using a
non-linear conversion function, and this function is very similar
to the gamma function. Using the gamma function allows you to
more easily adapt the printer output to the monitor picture.
Set:
----
Set globally sets all 16 adjustment sliders of the active colour
component to the values defined by the Gamma , Brightness and
Contrast sliders.
Invert
Bright+/-
Default
-------
Beside Set there are more gadgets providing global control over
the 16 adjustment sliders. Invert inverts all 16 sliders. The
two Bright gadgets allow you to increase or decrease the
brightness of all 16 sliders. Default resets all 16 sliders to
the default values used by most Commodore printer drivers (no
colour adjustment).
Adjustment sliders:
-------------------
The 16 colour adjustment sliders in the middle of the window give
you precise control over the colour adjustment function of the
driver. Each slider can be set to one of 256 shades. A higher
level means less of the currently selected primary colour. A
lower level means more colour, causing a darker picture. All 16
sliders describe a conversion function Conversion function . Dark
input values are adjusted by the sliders to the left, bright
colours are adjusted by the sliders to the right. As soon as you
click on one of the sliders, the value represented by the slider
is shown in the Level gadget on the left-hand side of the window.
Colour pictures are printed by most printers using three or four
primary colours. Usually these colours are cyan, magenta, yellow
and black. All 16 colour adjustment sliders are applied to one
primary colour. You can choose which primary colour to adjust
using the Color gadget in the upper left-hand corner of the
window.
But what if you want to use the gamma function to brighten a
greyscale picture? For this purpose select B/W-Grey as the colour
and use the gamma slider to select the required gamma setting.
Apply the gamma setting to the 16 adjustment sliders by clicking
on the Set gadget. After leaving the CanonPref program using Use
or Save , the gamma function is active.
While each of the 16 colour sliders provides 256 levels, this does
not necessarily mean you can print 256 shades of each colour. The
number of colours or shades printed depends upon the number of
colours or shades supported by the dither matrix being used. The
Canon installation program installs an ordered dither method with
64 shades as the default dither routine. More information about
setting up a dither matrix can be found on page custdit .
Push:
Pop:
-----
Now, say you want to apply a specific gamma function to each
primary colour. You could use the same technique for installing
the gamma function as described in the example above for every
primary colour. But this technique can be a slow process if you
have adjusted some sliders by hand. This is why the Push and Pop
gadgets have been introduced. Push saves all your current slider
settings on to the stack. After changing the colour component you
can easily Pop the settings from the stack. Using Pop for every
colour component is fast and easy.
Load:
Save:
-----
You can save the your colour adjustment function to a file for
later use. You could save your adjustment settings for various
kinds of paper, for example, and reload them when needed. Save
will cause the system file requester to appear and you can choose
a path and filename for saving. Load will cause the file
requester to appear and you can choose the file for loading. Note
that Save and Load only affect the currently selected colour
component.
Comp M:
Comp Y:
-------
The integer gadgets Comp. M and Comp. Y can be used to adjust
the ink compensation of the printer driver. Printer inks are not
completely pure materials. For example there is some yellow mixed
into the magenta ink, and there is some magenta found in the cyan
ink. The ink compensation values will correct for these
impurities allowing blues, for example, to be printed as blues
rather than purples.
Comp. M defines the percentage of magenta ink in the cyan ink.
Comp. Y defines the percentage of yellow ink in the magenta ink.
Use:
Cancel:
-------
You can leave the window with the Use or Cancel gadget. Changes
made to the settings are accepted with Use . Cancel leaves the
settings unchanged and any changes made will be lost.
Note: Use does not save the changes made to your environment.
This is achieved by using the Use or Save gadget in the main
window.
"Customize Dither..."
---------------------
First an important note before we go on in this chapter:
IMPORTANT
---------
Please note that a Canon driver behaves like a stupid driver if
you select a density below 3 for printing. This means, the driver
doesn't use any color correction, ink compenstion or even advanced
dithering as described below. Disabling the drivers advanced
routines by using the density setting is a common way to make the
driver not interfere with applications having their own similar
routines (Art Department Professional's PrefPrinter saver,
TruePrint24 and PageStream V2.x (not V3). Use density 1 or 2 when
printing with these programs. The CanonsStudio picture-printing
program also belongs to this category of programs, but it
automatically disables the CanonStudio driver's colour adjustment
routines.)
On all drivers except the CanonBJ-EC driver V6 (and later) the
advanced routines are also turned off if the user selects a dither
method other than ordered in the Workbench preferences program or
the used application (which does override the Workbench
preferences with the selected setting).
Now we continue with the chapter:
Most printers print pictures using a `binary coding', or to put it
more simply: a dot can either be printed, or not. There is no
way to control the brightness of a single dot. A monochrome
printer can only print one colour: black. Colour printers
support the printing of three or four primary colours: cyan,
magenta, yellow and black.
A special technique is needed for printing more shades. Dither
routines provide such a technique. Dither routines print dots of
a primary colour in various patterns, creating the impression of
different shades, thanks to the fact that the human eye can't
distinguish adjacent dots from a distance. Each pixel of a
picture produces a pattern of printed dots. The pattern is
described by a dither matrix. There are almost no limits to the
size of the dither matrix. Workbench dither matrices (ordered and
halftone) are of the size 4*4, which is equal to printing 17
shades (A normal 4*4 matrix produces 17 shades. This is not true
in case of the Workbench dither matrix). A matrix consists of
threshold values. Each matrix value is compared with the
picture's pixel value. If the value of the pixel is higher than
the matrix value, a dot gets printed.
Dither patterns allow you to print a huge number of shades. The
number of printable shades mainly depends on the size of the
dither matrix used and the quality of the printer.
Many printers have problems with inks running or overlapping dots.
These problems have a huge influence on the decision as to which
dither matrix to use. There is also a strong relationship between
a dither matrix and the colour adjustment required. A change of
print density often requires a change of the dither matrix and/or
colour adjustment, and changing the dither matrix usually requires
the colour adjustment also to be changed. This change is often
eased by the used of a "Preset" menu of the Canon preferences
programs.
Canon gives you the facilities to define the dither matrix used
for printing. Many dither matrices are included with the
CanonDisk. These are handled in an extra chapter; this chapter
covers only the use of the Customize Dither... window. This
window allows you to edit the current dither pattern.
The theoretical aspects of digital halftoning are complex, and are
way beyond the scope of this manual. If you are interested in
more detailed information, a very good book can be recommended:
Robert Ulichney
Digital Halftoning
MIT Press
ISBN 0-262-21009-6
The book is easy to understand and comes with lots of examples.
Most of the dither routines used in the Canon driver are described
in detail in this book.
Selecting Customize Dither leads you to a window allowing you to
select a wanted dither method for color and greyscale printing. A
preview of the selected dither method is shown on the right of the
window. The color gadget in the upper left corner decides wether
the selected dither method is used for greyscale or color
printing. Selecting the CUSTOM dither method makes the "Edit
Dither" gadget unghosted. Selecting Edit Dither allows you to
define and edit a wanted dither method for printing:
Load:
Save:
-----
Using the "Customize Dither..." window is very similar to using
the "Color Adjustments..." window. The Load and Save gadgets
allow you to load and save the required dither matrix for a
particular colour component. Only the currently selected Color
component is saved or loaded. Color
Push:
Pop:
-----
Let's assume you want to print a colour picture using the halftone
dither. There are two ways you can enable the halftone dither in
CanonPref. You can either load the dither matrix from disk for
each primary colour, or you can use the stack. The stack can be
controlled using the Push and Pop gadgets on the left-hand side of
the window.
All you have to do to install the required dither matrix is to
load the dither. Afterwards click on the Push gadget and the
dither is saved on to the stack. Now switch the primary colour
and Pop the matrix from the stack. Enable the matrix for all
primary colours by using the stack. You can switch between the
primary colours by using the Color cycle gadget Color .
A Canon dither matrix may be any rectangular shape and can consist
of up to 512 values. Up to 64 values can be included on each row
(X) or column (Y). You can use the X and Y sliders to define the
size of the matrix. The current size of the matrix is shown on
the left-hand side of the window.
Dither Routines
---------------
Many dithering methods are supplied with the CanonDisk, and these
are described below. In each case a larger dither mask size
produces a printout which can represent a wider range of colours,
but will produce less spatial information per unit area of paper.
Conversely, a smaller dither mask size can reproduce fewer colours
(or shades) but more closely approximates the true resolution of
your printer.
Another way of expressing this is simply that there is a tradeoff
between printing ``lots'' of colours and printing in high
resolution. Given a specific printer with a specific DPI
capability, asking for ``lots'' of colours means using a larger
dither mask size. A larger dither mask size cuts down on your
effective resolution. For instance, using a dither mask of 16*16
on your 360 dpi printer will result in 360/16=22.5 dpi (This
values is often described as l/inch (lines per inch) or `screen
frequency'.) with full colour information.
Note that this can work to your advantage when enlarging a
picture. Enlarging means that there are more dots to work with,
which offsets the loss in resolution caused by a larger dither
mask size. This, added to the benefits to be had by being able to
reproduce more colours (or shades), means that your enlarged
posters will look quite good. Also note that many printers,
including most laser printers and dot-matrix printers, have
considerable dot gain problems. For example, a 300 dpi laser
printer does not actually print dots which are 1/300 of an inch in
size. Rather, its dots will be much larger. This causes some
dithers, such as the Floyd-Steinberg and Ordered dithers, to
produce intensely over-saturated or `muddy' prints. Other
dithers, such as the two halftone dithers, overcome this problem
with low-end printers.
If you want to learn more about dither routines and digital
halftoning, here is a very good book to study:
Robert Ulichney
Digital Halftoning
MIT Press
ISBN 0-262-21009-6
The book is easy to understand and comes with lots of examples.
Most of the dither routines used by CanonDisk are described in
detail in this book.
With the exception of the Floyd, Jarvis, Stucki and Blue Noise
dithers, all dither routines described below are supported by the
Canon printer drivers.
OK, now let's discuss the dither routines in detail:
The number of printable colours is usually directly related to the
size of the dither matrix. Most of the ordered dither routines
described below exist in several sizes. You can distinguish
between them by their filenames. For instance a filename of
"Halftone-A-4" means the Halftone A dither routine for 4 shades;
while "Halftone-A-256" means the Halftone A dither routine for 256
shades.
Halftone-A - number of colors
Halftone-B - number of colors
10 Percent 20 Percent 50 Percent 80 Percent 90 Percent
**** ******** ********
* *** **** ***** ** *****
** *** **** ***** * *****
**** ******** ********
**** ******** ********
** *** **** **** * ****** *
** *** **** **** * ***** *
* **** ******** ********
The halftone dithers (Halftone-A and Halftone-B) differ in how
they place a halftone matrix.
This is the classic clustered halftone method used by most book
publishers, and PostScript (see figure halftonea ). To improve
the dither output the halftone matrix is rotated by 45 degrees.
Halftone-A causes the halftone matrix for each of the primary
colours to be centred about the same point. This means that the
primary colours will overlap completely, leaving a lot of white
paper showing through. This may be appropriate for some better
dye-sublimation type printers, or other colour printers with good
registration where the inks mix well.
Halftone-B, on the other hand, staggers the halftone matrix of
each primary colour so that they do not overlap. This is similar
in concept to traditional colour offset printing. Halftone-B may
produce better results on printers whose inks do not mix well, and
on printers with less than perfect registration.
The halftone dithers can produce some extremely good results and
compensate for the dot gain problems outlined above. Try both
halftone dithers to see which one is better for your particular
task. If you are going to photocopy your printouts, using
Halftone results in a much better copy.
Halftone-B is somewhat different to the other dither matrices.
You have a special dither matrix for each colour. Because of
this, each dither filename includes the abbreviation of the color
(C = cyan, Y = yellow, M = magenta, K = black or greyscale).
If you are using Halftone-B with one of the Canon printer drivers,
you must increase the brightness of the black colour component by
50 . Use the bright+ gadget in the appropriate Canon driver
preferences programs for increasing brightness.
Halftone-B is a good example of the relationship between colour
adjustment and dither routines. You have to consider both
settings.
PrtDevice-Halftone-16
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
* * * * * * * * * * * ** * ****
* * ** ** ** *** **** **** ****
* ** ** ** ** ** ** ****
* * * * * * * ** **** **** ****
PrtDevice-Ordered-16
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
* * * * * * * * * *** **** **** ****
* * * * * * * * * ** * ****
* * * * * * * * * * ** **** **** ****
* * * * * * * * * ****
This dither matrix is the one used by the Workbench printer
devices Halftone or Ordered dither.
Hexagonal-Cluster- number of colors
10 Percent 50 Percent 70 Percent
* * * *
* *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
* * * *
* *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
The hexagonal cluster method is very similar to the classical
Halftone dither. The halftone dot hexagonal and not rectangular
shaped, resulting in a better spatial frequency perrformance. The
results of hexagonal cluster are good in color and resolution,
making this dither a great deal for many tasks.
Ordered-A - number of colors
10 Percent 20 Percent 50 Percent 80 Percent 90 Percent
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * ******
* * * * ******** ********
* * * * * * * * * * *** *** *** ***
* * * * ******** ********
* * * * * * * * * * * * ***** **
* * * * ******** ********
* * * * * * * * * *** *** *** ***
* * * * ******** ********
The dispersed ordered dither produces a regular repeating pattern
which is often used for printing computer graphics. The ordered
dither is particularly vulnerable to over-saturation due to dot
gain in high resolutions. But you will get good output if you
don't use the maximum print density of your printer (for instance,
by using 180 dpi on a 360 dpi printer).
Ordered-B - number of colors
10 Percent 20 Percent 50 Percent 80 Percent 90 Percent
* ** ** ** ** ******** ********
** ** ** ** ** ******** ********
** ** ** ** ***** **
** ** ** ** **** ***
** * ** ** ** ******** ********
** ** ** ** ******** ********
** ** ****** ******
** ** ****** ******
This dither is a mixture of a dispersed dither like Ordered and a
clustered dither like Halftone. The dither is meant specially for
high resolution printers with dot gain problems. For instance, if
you print a picture with 360*360 dpi using Ordered-B-64, you get a
picture that appears to be printed at 180*180 dpi. But while
colours are printed emulating 180 dpi, all the black parts of the
picture are printed using 360 dpi. Don't be confused, the printed
picture is still better than a picture in real 180 dpi resolution.
The Ordered-B dither is especially useful for colour DTP because
you can combine good colour pictures with fine high quality text.
Spiral-Dot-Screen - number of colors
10 Percent 20 Percent 50 Percent 80 Percent 90 Percent
******** ********
****** ******** ********
* **** ****** ******** ********
*** **** ****** ******* ********
*** **** ****** ******* ********
* ****** ******* ********
** ******* ********
**
A wide range of special effects clustered-dither matrices are
available in the graphic arts industry, and all are easily
simulated digitally. Spiral-Dot is such a dither. The spiral-dot
dither is essentially half of the classical `screen', with dark
squares growing to fill the plane without the alternating light
squares. Spiral-Dot looks quiet similar to the Halftone-A matrix,
zero degree rotated.
Horizontal - number of colors
Vertical - number of colors
10 Percent 20 Percent 50 Percent 80 Percent 90 Percent
******* *********
***** ********* *********
**** ********* ********* *********
******* ********* ********* ********* *********
********* ********* *********
********* *********
****
A wide range of special effects clustered-dither matrices are
available in the graphic arts industry, and all are easily
simulated digitally. The Line dithers are such dithers.
The horizontal (as well as the vertical) dither overcomes many of
the dot gain problems that the error diffusion, Blue Noise and
Ordered dithers have with low-end printers. These dithers
(particularly the diagonal dithers) are especially good for
enlarged pictures.
Fwd-Brick- number of colors
Bck-Brick- number of colors
10 Percent 20 Percent 50 Percent 80 Percent 90 Percent
** *** ***** ******* ********
* ** **** ****** * ****** *
* *** * **** ** ***** **
** ** *** *** **** ***
* ** ** **** *** ****
* *** * ***** ** *****
* ** **** ****** * ******
** *** ***** ******* *******
A wide range of special effects clustered dither matrices are
available in the graphic arts industry and all are easily
simulated digitally. The Brick dithers are such dithers.
The Forward-Brick (as well as the Backward-Brick) dither overcomes
many of the dot gain problems that the error diffusion, Blue Noise
and Ordered dithers have with inexpensive printers. These dithers
are especially good for enlarged pictures.
Floyd Steinberg (no "char" picture)
Floyd Steinberg (Serpentine)
This is a very popular error diffusion dither method first
suggested by Floyd and Steinberg. They argued that a filter with
four elements was the smallest number that could produce `good'
results. The values were chosen to particularly ensure a
checkerboard pattern at the middle grey or shade of colour. This
dither method provides a good compromise of speed and quality.
The reason for the popularity of this algorithm is clear --
several colour shade levels are represented by pleasingly
isotropic, structureless distributions of dots. But there are
some shortcomings:
* Correlated artifacts in many of the colour shade level patterns.
This can be easily seen by printing a greyscale ramp.
* Directional hysteresis due to the raster order of processing.
This artifact is most apparent in very light and very dark
patterns.
The CanonStudio program and the CanonBJ-EC driver offer the dither
method with a serpentine raster used in processing. Serpentine
rastering is partly responsible for removing this artifact.
* Transient behaviour near edges or boundaries.
Jarvis, Judice und Ninke
Jarvis, Judice und Ninke (Serpentine)
In 1976 Jarvis, Judice and Ninke documented an error filter with
12 elements. The large filter size reduces some of the artifacts
seen with the 4-element filter of Floyd and Steinberg, but
directional hysteresis in the very dark and light regions are
increased, and pixels are clustered together more in the middle of
colour shade regions. It also sharpens the pictures.
The CanonStudio program and the CanonBJ-EC driver offer the dither
method with a serpentine raster used in processing. Serpentine
rastering is partly responsible for removing artifacts seen by all
error diffussion dithers (Artifacts? Ever seen "snakes" in the
output?).
Stucki-Dither
Stucki-Dither (Serpentine)
The Stucki filter provides nearly the same output as the Jarvis
filter, though you may notice differences in sharpness.
The CanonStudio program and the CanonBJ-EC driver offer the dither
method with a serpentine raster used in processing. Serpentine
rastering is partly responsible for removing artifacts seen by all
error diffussion dithers (Artifacts? Ever seen "snakes" in the
output?).
Blue-Noise 30-50%
Blue-Noise 30-50% (Serpentine)
In trying several combinations of deterministic values in a
4-element error filter, none proved better than the famed filter
of Floyd and Steinberg. Two variations of this basic filter are
the Blue Noise dithers included with the CanonStudio program and
the CanonBJ-EC driver. Both are processed with serpentine
rasters. The serpentine raster used in processing is responsible
for much of the directional artifact elimination. The noisy
threshold (30% or 50% white noise) breaks up most of the remaining
stable texture patterns, yielding good radial symmetry at the
expense of adding some low frequency energy.
Blue noise is especially useful when printing light shades and
fading colours.
All error diffusion dithers, including Blue Noise, can produce
very good results on colour printers that have little dot gain and
very good registration. If it produces a washed-out print or
particularly bad patterns, then try another dither (see the custom
Ordered-B or Halftone, for instance).
Sierra 2 (incl. Serpentine method)
Sierra 3 (incl. Serpentine method)
In 1989, Frankie Sierra came out with his slow Sierra3 filter. A
year later, Sierra followed up with a modification claiming to
offer better quality than the Floyd Steinberg filter without
losing speed. The two filters are named Sierra3 and Sierra2 in
reference to the number filter lines used.
Burkes (Serpentine)
Daniel Burkes of TerraVision undertook to improve upon the Stucki
filter in 1988. The Burkes filter is just a simplification of the
Stucki filter. As a result print speed is improved.
BJ-FontShop
===========
The BJ-FontShop program enables you to generate and download fonts
from your Amiga to the BJ and BJC printers (except for the
BJC-8x0, BJ-130, BJ-300 and BJ-330). As a font source it uses
standard Amiga fonts. If you use a font with a high resolution
(size, that is) you can get the best print quality out of your
printer. The printer's dip switches must be set to BJ emulation
in order to use downloaded fonts. The BJ-FontShop program only
works in combination with the CanonBJ5-230 driver. BJC-600/4000
users must install a driver as if they were Canon BJ-200 users in
order to get FontShop and the proper driver installed.
"T" char next "T" char
---------------- --------- \
| ---------- | | ---- |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | \
| | | | / font size
| | | | |
| | | | |
Baseline-> |- - - - - - -| | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
---------------- --- /
\_____ _______/ ^
\/ |
width ------ InterSpace
FontShop can be controlled similarly to the CanonPref programs
described above. It has the same font independent user interface
and startup arguments.
Now you can save the download font by clicking on the Download
gadget. The font will be used next time you print using the
CanonBJ5-230 driver.
MAKE SURE YOUR PRINTER DIP SWITCHES ARE SETUP CORRECTLY FOR
DOWNLOAD FONTS.
There are several things you can alter in the main window. These
are in most cases only for experienced users and will be discussed
in the following list of possibilities:
Font:
This is a readonly field and shows you the currently selected
font.
CPI:
This is a readonly field and shows you the characters per inch
(cpi) of the selected font. The cpi number depends on your
selected font, font width, InterSpace and font mode (Proportional
or Mono Spaced characters).
"Select a font..."
This gadget will bring up the systems font requester. Select a
required font and style (underlined, italics, bold, or invers) for
downloading. Note: the printers normal font height is 48 dots
(and high 36 dots wide). You may download a smaller or greater
fonts, but a font greater than 48 dots will most likely be cut of
at the bottom. If you only want to use the upper case characters
of a downloaded font, you may use a font higher than 48 dots with
a baseline of up to 48 dots. If all upper case characters are
above the baseline, everything should work fine and you get
"super" characters. The default baseline of a selected font is
shown in the "Baseline" gadget after selecting a font.
There are several commercial and public domain font collections
available, offering you large 48 dot high fonts in high quality.
Also, you may use Intellifonts (CompuGraphic) from Agfa
Corporation if you have installed the right diskfont library (see
your Kickstart 2 manual for more information). Over 250
Intellifonts are available offering you high quality output at
variable sizes and styles.
Also, if you wish to make your own downloadable chars or alter
existing fonts, there are several nice and easy to use font
editors available on the Amiga (public domain and commercial).
Ask your dealer for advice.
To:
This is a cycle gadget. If Prefs (Use) is selected, the font is
downloaded directly to ENV: directory. The printer driver will
download the saved font the next time you send an aRIN or aRIS
command. If you want to save the font permanently instead of
temporarily, use Prefs (Save) . This will save the font in the
non volatile ENVARC: directory. You may also download the font
directly to a file for later use by selecting File . These font
files can be quickly downloaded from your application program or
batch file in quantities. If File is selected and the download is
started, a file requester will ask you for a filename. Note: the
font files must be copied to PAR: not PRT: !
Space Mode:
This is a cycle gadget. You may download a font to the printer in
a fixed width ( Mono Space ) given in the Char Width gadget. Or
you may download the font with proportional spaced chars. You may
define a special space ( InterSpace ) between two proportional
chars giving a lighter font impression. Note, the given mode
reflects the downloaded font mode, not the Amiga font mode. You
may download a mono spaced Amiga font as a proportional printer
font (ie. kerning is used). Even if the downloaded font is mono
spaced, the printer regards the font as a proportional spaced font
(even though it isn't). After selecting a new font with Select a
font... this gadget is altered to the mode of the newly selected
font.
Char Width:
This integer gadget can only be activated, if Mono Space mode is
active. With this gadget you may define the width of all
characters in dots. After selecting a new font, the value of the
gadget will be set to the default width of the selected font. In
the event you selected a proportional font, the gadget reflects
the width of the widest character of that proportional font.
InterSpace:
This integer gadget can only be activated, if Proportional mode is
active. With this gadget you can define a microspace between
downloaded proportionally spaced characters.
Baseline:
With this integer gadget you specify the number of dots between
the baseline and the top border. After selecting a new font, the
Baseline will automatically be set to the system baseline of that
font.
Download:
After clicking on this gadget, the downloading is started. Please
be patient, the download may take some time. During downloading,
all gadgets are ghosted.
Quit:
Clicking on this gadget (or the Close window gadget) quits the
program.
General information about BJ-FontShop and points to note:
FontShop supports accented characters. Note however that some
accents are generated by combining two chars (for instance ø = o +
/). When downloading such chars in a small size and proportional
mode, there may be slight misalignments (for instance causing a o/
instead of ø). You can avoid such problems by altering the size
of the special chars or downloading the font in mono space mode.
Although the Amiga has a very large font table, the BJ is not
capable of holding so many downloadable characters in its printer
memory at once. Because of this, only "commonly used" characters
are downloaded to the printer. The few characters not downloaded
will be printed in the normal resident font of the printer.
The program assumes you have 32KB of download RAM in your printer.
If you select a large font, this RAM may not be big enough causing
some char definitions to be ignored by the printer (accents are
the first chars which are lost in this case, therefore make sure
they are actually required)
Errors and Fixes
----------------
For experienced computer and printer users, it's a known fact:
Everything possible that can go wrong, will go wrong. Especially
when it comes to printing and there are many places where one can
make mistakes.
If you can't solve a problem with Canon drivers, a Report program
can be found on the CanonDisk. Report prints all driver and
CanonStudio settings to a specified disk. Simply return that disk
and any further details or samples to the author. Very often in
the past users didn't supply enough information to help us find
the cause of the problem. Please, use Report and give us any
detail or file you have involved in your problem.
Report also performs some further system checks. A requester will
appear if there is something wrong with your system.
Please make sure that you have this information handy when asking
for help. Without the output of Report it is nearly impossible to
track down problems, and thus supply solutions.
If you find a problem with a Canon printer driver, please send a
description which makes it possible to reproduce the problem. For
this purpose, you should provide the following information:
1. Which application program are you using, and which version of it?
2. Which Workbench revision are you using?
3. Include a dump of the program, as a file (use the
CMD program from the Workbench disk for this) and in printed
form also.
Note: any report disks or samples are not returned unless
requested. Too often, returning a disk would cost more postage in
Germany than buying a new disk. Also note: include postage if
you want an answer.
Wrong sized or cropped Personal Paint output?
So far, it seems that at least one widely available Personal Paint
version (6.4?) has a bug, causing the wrong paper size being
selected. So if your output is cropped or crippled in some strange
way, it might be a result of the driver printing a to large image
(DIN A3 on DIN A4 paper). There are two solutions:
1. The best solution of course is to register CanonStudio.
Personal Paint can print directly using CanonStudio with all it's
features. And you can continue working while printing is done in
background.
2. Try a different paper setting. The bug in Personal Paint just
shows you the wrong paper size selected. This doesn't mean
Personal Paint doesn't select a paper size. So simply try various
paper sizes. It's very likely one paper size works fine (I
haven't verfied this- but all indications to point to this
direction).
Faulty characters at the start of a page?
Please, you can assume we have tested the driver with basicly all
Canon printers. If you do get faulty characters at the start of a
page (maybe only sometimes), than this might be caused by various
reasons (in order of likeliness):
- Please check your printer cable. Make sure you have
a high quality and SHORT cable. Usually you should
avoid switch boxes (good electronic ones are fine) as
they lower the signal quality.
Note: it is very likely your cable, computer and printer
is fine and still, the printer doesn't work.
Sometimes the combination of bad quality components can
cause problems which are not seen as soon you replace a
component.
- The printer is not setup correctly. Please check your
dip switches. If your printer offers an "Auto" emulation
feature, disable it and select the emulation supported
by the Amiga driver.
Especialy users of the new BJC 80, 210, BJC 240,
4100, 4200, 4300, 4550, 4650 printers should
be warned: the printer might print weird characters at
the start of the page until you used the provided
SetupBJL software in order to setup the printer to
the proper emulation.
- And well at last, maybe there is a bug in the driver.
In this case, generate a dumpfile using the Workbench CMD
program and sent us the dumpfile to have it checked.
Don't forget to include all the info of your settings
as described above.
Par: or Prt:?
Data should be sent to the printer only via parallel.device ( par:
) or printer.device ( prt: ), and not both at the same time as
this may confuse the printer.
Empty pages before dump?
BJ users with a cut sheet feeder and BJ emulation (for instance
BJ200) should not set a top margin as this causes an empty page to
be fed before the actual printing.
Some applications can print an empty page BEFORE the first print
after the driver was loaded into memory (Personal Paint 6.4). The
problem only appears with some applications and only when the
driver is set to Extended Emulation. In these cases you have to
accept the first page or simply switch the driver to Epson or BJ
emulation. The problem is a result of the application trying to
print text before graphics.
If you do get blank pages when printing in Epson emulation, that
check your page size settings. There have been no known driver
bugs during the past 7 years, that would cause unwanted empty
pages in the output of the Canon driver. So check your page size
and unprintable margin settings. It's easy to setup them up
wrongly causing empty pages.
Red text printed with MultiView and CanonBJ-EC
If you get only red/magenta text printed from MultiView: this is
not a bug in the driver. It's a bug in MultiView that appears
with all Amiga printer drivers supported colored text. One
solution is to use a BJ driver after setting the printer to BJ
emulation. The BJ driver doesn't support color and thus works
fine with MultiView.
White graphic dumps
In the event that stripes or empty lines appear in graphic dumps
check your printer margins (DIP switches, preference settings,
settings within the program you use,...). Make sure your printers
ink cartridge is full. Also make sure your computer has enough
memory. In particular Art Department (TM) Professional 2 users
should use the MAXMEM option to make sure the driver does have
enough memory for printing or ADPro will simply print trash or
empty lines. About 100 kb memory should be available before
starting to print!
No text dumps?
There is one reason causing white pages instead of text dumps.
After printing graphics using the BJ 2x0 and BJC Extended
Emulation mode (or Graphics Only that is), the printer is unable
to print text. You must flush the driver out of memory for
printing text again. You can flush the driver by using Avail
Flush from CLI or by selecting Use or Save in the CanonPref
program.
No dump?
If the printer device immediately reports an error while
trying to print a graphic, check that you have selected the
correct Canon printer driver in Workbench preferences.
No way for Kickstart 2&3
Your printer doesn't work under Kickstart 2 or 3, while with
Kickstart 1.3 it works fine? Check the "on-line" and "out of
paper" lines in the printer cable. Make sure they are connected
correctly. If your cable is wired correctly then, check the two
Amiga port chips named 8520. There have been major changes in
Kickstart 2 regarding the use of the port chips. Ask your dealer
for help if these tips are too technical for you!
Empty pages?
Empty pages is a known problem of Amiga printer drivers with page
orientated printers (like laser printers). After graphics dumps
an empty page is printed. So far there is no 100% cure for this
problem. Some application programs don't cause an empty page if
you enable the Continuous paper type in preferences. Also, some
Canon drivers do have a special feature avoiding empty pages,
though, it may not allways work.
Printer trouble...
Printer trouble... requester? Have a look at the TimeOut setting
of the Canon drivers. Setting a longer Timeout can avoid such
requesters. Note: clicking on the Resume button continues
printing without loss of data.
No Formfeed
If a page is not ejected, check your paper type preferences. Make
sure Single is selected as the paper type. Deluxe Paint users may
run into the problem of an endless graphic dump -- the Deluxe
Paint print requester won't disappear, and the printer doesn't
eject the page. This is a known bug in Deluxe Paint and can be
easily cured by a mouse click in the Deluxe Paint print requester.
Differences between KS 2 and KS 1.3?
After switching from Workbench 1.3 to 2/3 your graphic dumps are
of different size? This most likely will happen to users using
the DIN A4 paper size. For instance, under Workbench 1.3 you used
the Letter size, and after switching to Workbench 2/3 you used the
DIN A4 size. Because all Canon drivers support the new paper
sizes (DIN A4, A5 ...), you get a different printout under
Workbench 2.0/2.1. Simply switch back to the Letter size to get
the same result as under Workbench 1.3.
Patching drivers
There are several programs that allow you to `patch' printer
drivers in order to alter specific commands or parameters like the
Timeout value. Do not use these programs!
Set Aspect doesn't work?
This problem will most likely happen to CanonStudio users with
pictures saved by Art Department Professional. Clicking on Set
Aspect does not set the correct aspect ratio of the image for
printing. Usually the width of the image is too small, or the
picture is too tall to put it another way. Make sure Art
Department Professional saves the correct aspect ratio by using
its Set Pixel Aspect operator The dpi values saved by Art
Department Professional are imported for the Set Aspect function.
Too dark pictures?
If your graphic dumps are too dark or wrongly coloured, it is most
likely caused by the disabled colour adjustment routines of the
Canon driver. For more information see the color adjustment
section.
CanonPref and FontShop doesn't startup?
All CanonPref and FontShop programs require at least Kickstart
2.04. They also work fine under Workbench 2.1 and 3.
Printing trash?
Some printers do have problems when connected to the Amiga with an
incorrectly wired cable even though the cable might work fine with
some other printers and or computers. When printing, strange
graphic characters appear on the output. These characters often
only appear under special conditions (graphics only). Note you
should not use a cable longer than 1.5 meters!
Also, on the BJ 2x0 and BJC800 you can easily confuse the printer
by not correctly switching between native (Graphics only) and
BJ/Epson emulation. Specialy take care when using the PageStram
and Workbench driver at the same time!
Printer hangs during aRIN?
If your BJ printer immediately hangs after starting to print and
you have to reset the printer for further printing, you should
check, if the printer has a problem with the drivers init commands
by sending an aRIN command. On extreamly rare occasions some BJ
printer may hang up when initialised and the printer has to be
reset manualy to proceed (with an unitialised printer). In this
case ask your dealer for further help (it's the ESC-[-K-0-1
command that is causing the problem).
Again note: This problem is extreamly rare and before contacting
your dealer, check your printer and computer thoroughly first.
Page size is wrong
Specialy Canon BJC800 users should note, that the Canon BJC800
printer is a single page printer. The printer does not support
non cut sheet paper. Because of this you must define a page
length! The way this is done depends on what emulation you are
using:
In Epson mode the page length can be defined by setting CanonForm
to ON and defining the number of lines per page in preferences as
250 or the real page length. Setting page length to 250 is
recommended. In this case the printer driver itself chooses the
optimal page length for your selected paper size. For instance if
you select DIN A4 and a page length of 250 lines, the driver
automatically chooses 65 lines per page at 6 lines per inch.
Note: the Canon BJ-EC Epson emulation stores the page length in
inches. Because of this, small changes to the page length might
not affect the output.
In Canon Extended Emulation mode, the driver automatically sets
the page length similar to the Epson modes "250" lines mode. In
Canon Extended Emulation mode, the printer is also able to print
on a greater area. Also the page length can be defined in 1/10"
accuracy. Again: use the Canon BJC Extended emulation for
graphic prints.
Note: setting paper size to FANFOLD (or continues) automatically
defines the maximum page length of 22 inch under Canon Extended
Emulation.
Altered print height?
In case the print height is altered everytime you select a picture
in CanonStudio, check your ADJUST ON STARTUP setting in the menu
of the smaller main window.
Glossary
========
Default:
A value used in place of a user-selected value. A factory default
is a value programmed into the device at the factory; this value
is stored in read-only memory (ROM) and cannot be changed by a
user or operator. A user default is a default that is selectable
via the control panel.
Dot:
A dot is the smallest thing a printer can print. The number of
dots printed per inch is referred to as the printer's resolution
(dpi).
Download:
The process of transferring soft fonts, macros or raster data from
a host computer to the printer's user memory is called
downloading.
DPI
See Dot.
ENV:
ENVARC:
The Amiga operating system and the Canon drivers store their
environment settings in two special directories named ENV: and
ENVARC: . Settings saved in ENV: are only for temporary usage
and are lost when turning the computer off.
Parallel I/O
An input/output interface that transmits more than one bit of
information simultaneously. Centronics is an industry-wide
standard form of a parallel interface.
Pitch:
Pitch describes the number of characters printed in a horizontal
inch. Pitch only applies to fixed-spaced fonts since the number
of characters per inch varies for proportionally-spaced fonts.
See Spacing.
Printable Area
The printable area is the area of the physical page on which the
printer is able to place a dot, wheras the physical page refers to
the actual size of the paper installed in the printer.
Raster Graphics
Images composed of groups of dots are called raster images.
Spacing
Fonts have either fixed or proportional spacing. Fixed-spaced
fonts are those for which the inter-character spacing is constant.
Proportionally-spaced fonts are those for which the
inter-character spacing varies with the natural shape of a
character.
Symbol Set
A symbol set is a unique ordering of the characters in a font.
Each symbol set is defined with a unique set of applications in
mind. Symbol sets are created for many purposes.
Typeface
Typeface is a generic name for graphics symbols having common
design features. Each typeface has unique and distinguishing
characteristics.
(Continue by pressing 'Q')