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Text File | 1993-03-13 | 27KB | 539 lines

**************************************************************************** * * * DocPrint - The papersaver from Baeri-Soft * * Version 2.00 (C) 1993 Hartmut Jaeger * * * **************************************************************************** What is DocPrint and what is it good for? ========================================= If you open a book, you can see, that most papersheets are printed on both sides and you can see, that on the odd pages with the numbers 1, 3, 5 and so on, there is a gutter margin for better looking pages, because they are bound together on the left side. In most books the pages have pagenumbers and sometimes even head- or footnotes. If you often work with public domain software or shareware, then you have to read a lot of documentations. In most cases it is useful to print it. What a pity, that most documentaions are unformated. It is a heavy work to use a wordprocessor for inserting headers and footers and the page- numbers. And there are many Amiga-owners with printers, which use fanfold paper. If you print on this paper, the backside of each sheet will stay white. This was the reason to develop DocPrint. DocPrint can print all ASCII-Files, even such files, which are packed with PowerPacker from Nico Francois. Formfeeds and ANSI-controllcodes will be respected. You can print on fanfold paper or on single sheets on both sides or only on the front side. You can choose the margins and the size of the sheets freely. If the printer is able to do it, you can print in near letter quality or in draft. And if you don't own a printer, you can print the ASCII-text on disk in one file or if you want to print doublesided, in two files and then visit a friend, who owns an amiga and a printer. This friend does not need to own DocPrint, because you can simply copy these files to PRT:. DocPrint makes the life with ASCII-files easier. Copyright and the other legal stuff: ==================================== DocPrint 2.0 is distributed as shareware. That means, that you must pay your license fee, if you try this program and use it for a time longer than four weeks. After that time you should pay US$ 10 or DM 15,- or an equal value in an other currency to the author. You will receive a ver- sion of DocPrint without that ugly shareware window. This registerd ver- sion must not be sold or given to other persons or groups. Please send your registration fee to: Baeri-Soft Hartmut Jaeger PD and Shareware for Commodore Amiga Bochumer Strasse 131 D-4350 Recklinghausen-Sued Germany Tel.: +49 2361 / 654422 (private : +49 2323 / 35821) FAX : +49 2361 / 657245 E-Mail: JAEGER_HARTMUT@DIODE.ZER If you want to pay your shareware fee direct to the bank account of the author, please use one of the following accounts. Please don't forget to notice your name and address for delivering the registered version. Herner Sparkasse Konto-Nummer 4403754 BLZ 432 500 30 or Postgiroamt Dortmund Konto-Nummer 322075-460 BLZ 440 100 46 The shareware version is not limited, however you can see a shareware window, before DocPrint starts its work. You have to click on the gadget in that window to get rid of it. You are allowed to give this shareware version to other persons or groups for a maximum fee of DM 5,- or US$ 5,- for the disk and transportation costs. Special permission for the redi- stribution is given for the fd-series 'AUGE 4000', 'Time', 'Franz' and the outstanding software library from Fred Fish. Notice: Please buy your 'Fish-Disk' direct from Fred Fish, if possible! If you want to give the files to other persons via disk or modem, they must be kept together in a single directory or packed in an archiv. The files, which belong to DocPrint, are: DocPrint the program itself DocPrint.info icon for the program DocPrint.DocE english documentation for DocPrint DocPrint.DocE.info icon for the documentation powerpacker.library packerlibrary from Nico Francois DocPrint.Cfg configurationfile for DocPrint Install installationprogram Install.info icon for installationsprogram You must not change these files except the icons. If you want to distri- bute the programm on PD disks, please feel free to use your favorite textreader as default tool in the icons. The documentation may be packed with PowerPacker (identity PP20). You are not allowed to use the patched version of PowerPacker with the identity PP2O to crunch the documen- tation. You may crunch the program itself with PowerPacker as a command file, of course. References: =========== DocPrint was written in Modula 2 with the programming package M2Amiga version 4.096d from A+L AG. In addition the toolbox MasterPieces from Schneider-Verlag, Am Weinberg 46, W-8301 Arth (Germany) was used. What hardware does DocPrint need? ================================= Each Amiga with Kickstart 1.3 and WB 1.3 or higher. Runs under OS 2.x or higher. You need a printer or a friend, who owns a printer ans an amiga. DocPrint needs the PAL-Mode because it opens a 640 x 256 screen. What software does DocPrint need? ================================= DocPrint wants to have the textreader 'MuchMore' in the directory C:. If you want to use a different textreader, you have to specify the right program in the configuration file. This textreader must be present when you run DocPrint. For printing via PRT: your printer should be installed correctly via preferences or prefs. DocPrint needs the command 'run' in the directory C:. Installation and start: ======================= Please install your printer correct via preferences or prefs, because DocPrint prints the text via printer.device. You have to copy the power- packer.library to libs: for access of powerpacked text. Thanks to Nico Francois for this great feature. The configuration file will be searched in S:. If DocPrint can't find it, it will use default values, but you will be noticed, that DocPrint could'nt find its configuration file. The copying of powerpacker.library and the sample configuration file is done with the small script 'install'. You can start DocPrint from Workbench or from the CLI or the shell. If you want to start ist from Workbench, simply click twice on the icon. If you want to start it from CLI/Shell, please use this command: DocPrint [textname] The name 'textname' of the textfile is not necessary. If you use it, then DocPrint will take this file as the current textfile to print. This feature is for use of DocPrint as a command for directory utilities like SID by Timm Martin or DirOpus by Jonathan Potter. The textname should contain a complete pathname like MyWB:ascii/TextToPrint. Declarations of the buttons: ============================ All buttons ( fields to click ) are grouped to different function groups. The top button is only a button for the copyright notice. The other buttons are descripted one after the other in the order from left top to right bottom. Quit The most complicated button. No security question. WB-Screen: DocPrints screen will flip into the background and the workbenchscreen will apear. Configuration: Clicking on this button will put two new buttons on the screen at this place. These buttons are for saving and loading of the configuration. If you didn't want to click on this button, then call the filerequester by clicking on one of the two buttons and in the filere- quester please click on CANCEL. Load Loading a configuration file via filerequester. The de- Configuration: fault path is S:DocPrint.cfg. More later. Save Saving the current configuration via filerequester. The Configuration: default path is S:DocPrint.cfg. More later. Colors: Call the colorselector. The current colors will be saved with all the configuration values. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Formlength: Length of the papersheets in lines (!). If you use paper with a length of 11" and you want to print with 6 LPI, then you have to choose 66 here. If you use single sheets, you can type in a smaller value. The value always means lines per sheet. The value must be a posi- tiv integer. To change the value, please click in this field. Hor. Formsize: The horizontal size of the paper in inch. Default value is 8. The value must be a positiv integer. P lease click in this button to change the value. No. of lines: How many lines per page should be printed? Please click in this button to change the value. If the value is to large, then DocPrint will shorten the value to the maxi- mum size. Tip: Choose a value, which is two lines to the maximum to avoid problems with the perforation of the fanfold paper. Fontheight: 6 lines per inch or 8 lines per inch. To toggle the value please click in the button. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSI On/Off: If you can see ANSI On, then DocPrint will send all ANSI codes in the text to the printer.device. If you toggle it to ANSI Off by clicking in the button DocPrint will not send ANSI codes to the printer. That means no bold or underlined printing etc. Gut. Margin: A margin, which only apears on the the left side on odd pages. If you don't print doublesides, the gutter margin will simply be added to the left margin. The value in the button is the number of spaces, which are printed on the left side. For changing the value please click in the button. Left margin: Will be printed in front of each line. The value in the button means the number of spaces, which will be printed on the left side. To change the value please click in the button. Font: Characters per inch. Please toggle between 10, 12, 17 and 20 CPI. Please click sometimes in the button until the right value apears. If a value isn't possible it will not be accessible. Please notice, that not all printers support all four values. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pagenumbers ON/: ON means with pagenumbers. The position, which is speci- OFF fied in the button 'Pos. Pagenumber' will be used. OFF means without pagenumbers. The specified position will be ignored. To toggle the display please click in the button. 1. Pageno.: Number of the first page. Must be odd, for example 1, 3, 1009 and so on. Will be ignored, if Pagenumbers are turned to OFF. To enter the value please click in the button. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Text: Only a field for displaying the path and filename. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Head: Button for a text that will be printed as a headernote. The text may contain up to 80 characters. If there is a headertext, a pagenumber can not apear in the middle of the top of the page. Please click in the button to enter the text. Foot: Button for a text that will be printed as a footernote. The text may contain up to 80 characters. If there is a footertext, a pagenumber can not apear in the middle of the bottom of the page. Please click in the button to enter the text. Remark: The headernotes and footernotes will always be centered. The left margin and the gutter margin will be noticed. Pos. Pagenumber: Top or Bottom. Inside, Middle or Outside. The switching between the six values is done by multiple clicking in the button. If there is a headernote the text Top Middle does not apear. If there is a footernote the text Bottom Middle will not apear. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choose Text: Specify the text to print out. The choice is done with a filerequester. The text will be checked for maximum line length and formfeeds. The lines will be counted. If a text is printed you can specify a new text with this button without leaving the program. If the text is packed with PowerPacker, the text will be decrunched and stored into memory until a new text is specified. If there is enough free memory, unpacked text will be stored in memory for printing too. The result is faster analysing of the text and less diskchanging, if you own only one diskdrive. Check Text: Read the current text. The default textreader is c:much- more. You can change this to your favourite textreader with a texteditor in the configuration file, of course. You can use every texreader, that runs from CLI with the command 'textreader <textname>'. Start Printing: You can't guess it, but this button starts the printing. To print a text, a text must be loaded, analysed and it must be a ASCII text. While printing, all buttons except 'WB-Screen' are disabled. The display 'Start Printing' changes to 'Stop Printing'. Click the button to stop the printout. The contents of the buffer in the printer can not be stopped however. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Singlesided/: Printing singlesided is like using toilet paper: the Doublesided backside remains free. But DocPrint loves the printing on the backsides. If you choose double sided printing, you will be asked, whether DocPrint should print an extra sheet of paper for easier turning of the paper after printing the odd pages. This is useful for printers with a pull tractor. To toggle the printmode please click in the button. NLQ On/Off: How would you like to print your document? Beauty or quickly? To toggle NLQ on or off please click in this button. Output Printer/: Printing to printer.device or to a file. If you want to File print in a file, you are aked for a filename with a filerequester. If you want to print singlesided in a file, the extension .ALL will be added to the filename. While printing doublesided to files, there will be two files after printing. The file with the odd pages will have the extension .ODD at the filename, the file with the even pages will get a filename with the extension .EVE. To toggle the printmode please click in the button. If one of the outputfiles is present while printing to file, then nothing will be printed. The text will only be read, but not altered. The text therfore can be writeprotected. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Print: All: With this togglebutton you can choose to print the hole From...To text or only a part of the text. T o print a part of the text is useful while printing a long text with more than 100 pages or a text with a superlong introduction and a end without interest. If you choose to print the hole dokument, the follwing two buttons are disabled. ..from Page: Is only clickable, if you choose to print a part of the document. In this button you can specify the first page to print. If you want to print doublesided, only an odd number is valid. The entered number means the number of pages, which should not be printed and not the page- numbers. You can specify the first pagenanumber in the button '1. Pageno.:'. ..to Page: Is only clickable, if you choose to print a part of the document. In this button you can specify the last page to print. If you want to print doublesided, only an even number is valid. Please notice the declarations of the button '..from Page'. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Numb. of Pages: Only a displaybutton. After analysing a text the number of pages to print apears. This number depends on the number of lines per page. If you change the number of lines, then the number of pages will be calculated new. If you want to print doublesided, then always an even number will apear in this button. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linelength: After analysing the text, the number of the characters of the longest line will be displayed here. If the text contains ANSI codes, they will not be counted. The number, which apears in this button will set the font of the printer. IF 10 CPI is not small enough, 12 CPI will be used etc. The maximum is 20 CPI. FormFeeds: If the text contains formfeeds, then YES will apear or this button will show NO. It is only a notice for you. Declarations of the configurationfile: ====================================== DocPrint searches for the configurationfile "S:DocPrint.cfg" after startup. If DocPrint can't find this file, you will hear a short beep and you will read a message. That is not tragic, because DocPrint will work with default values. If you want to load a configuration, you have to click on the 'Configuration' button and then on 'Load'. You can choose your configuration with a filerequester now. If you click on 'CANCEL' in the filerequester, nothing will be loaded or changed. The configurationfile is a pure ASCII file, which you can edit with any ascii editor (even with Ed). It is important, that the first line, the identification, is written in a correct way. Please mind the []. If you don't change anything in DocPrints screen and save the configuration file instantly, you will get the following configuration file, of course without the comments, which are enclosed in (* and *), which is usual in Modula2. [Baeris DocPrint] (* Identification *) DOUBLESIDED=ON (* or OFF *) LETTERQUALITY=OFF (* NLQ ON or OFF *) PAGENUMBERS=ON (* or OFF = without pagenumbers *) OUTPUTE=FILE (* or PRINTER *) FORMLENGTH=72 (* Lines per papersheet *) PAPERSIZE=8 (* in hole inches *) NUMBEROFLINES=66 (* How many lines to print per page *) POSITION=OUTSIDEBOTTOM (* Position of pagenumbers *) EXTERNVIEWER=OFF (* C:MuchMore will be used *) TEXTVIEWER=C:VIEW80 (* Textviewer may be C:View80 *) WBTOFRONT=OFF (* Workbench to front while reading text*) LINESPERINCH=6 (* 6 lines/inch or 8 lines/inch *) CHARACTERSPERINCH=10 (* 10 CPI or 12 or 17 or 20 *) LEFTMARGIN=2 (* Number of spaces on the left side *) GUTTERMARGIN=3 (* Number of spaces left on odd pages *) COLOR0=6 (* The eight colors as 24 bit RGB-values*) COLOR1=4095 COLOR2=208 (* Please change these values only with *) COLOR3=0 (* the colorrequester of DocPrint. You *) COLOR4=3536 (* will save a lot of calculation *) COLOR5=2730 COLOR6=1365 COLOR7=3840 You must notice some conditions while editing the configuration file: - No spaces before or after the equation character. - The line with the identification must be the first line and it must not contain spaces at the left side. - Only one configuration command per line. - The commands are case insensitive. DOC and doc are the same words. - You can choose the order of the commands as you like it. You can do nearly all changes from within DocPrint. The exception is the command for specifying the textviewer for control of the text. Default is C:MuchMore. That will not be noticed in the configuration file. If you want to use a different textviewer, then you have to specify a line EXTERNVIEWER=ON in the configuration file. In addition you have to specify a line TEXTVIEWER=<path/programname> in the configuration file. The expression <path/programname> means the textviewer. A valid term for example is TEXTVIEWER=c:PPMore. Interesting is the following line WBTOFRONT=ON or WBTOFRONT=OFF with default OFF. If you set it to ON, then the workbench will be brought to front, before the textviewer ist called. This is useful, if the text- reader opens its window on the workbenchscreen (stv from Timm Martin is such a textreader). After leaving the textreader, the screen of DocPrint will apear in the front again. Errormessages and your suggestions to do things better: ======================================================= Nobody is perfect. There may be errors and bugs in DocPrint (I don't hope so!). If you find a bug or wish to do something better, then please write to Baeri-Soft. I need your comments for the new version. To make it easy for you to write a comment, you will find a sort of form at the end of this text, which you can fill with any texteditor and then print it with DocPrint. If you use a NEC P6+ printer, then please turn off your printer before you turn the paper for printing the even pages. There may be a bug in the printer. The result is, that the right margin is not enough on the right side. I dont't know the reason for that, because DocPrint clears the margins before printing the even pages. Support of textfiles, that are crunched with PowerPacker: ========================================================= On a lot of fd-disks you can find documentations, which are compressed with PowerPacker from Nico Francois. DocPrint has an interface to access such textfiles without decrunching them outside DocPrint. If the text be- gins with the identification PP20, then it will be decrunched in RAM. You can see that, because the pointer will permanently change its color. The text will then be printed out of the RAM. If there is not enough free RAM then the text can't be decrunched and you will get an errormessage. In this case you have to decrunch it via PowerPacker. Please notice, that PowerPacker can compress other files than text with the identification PP20. DocPrint will check that and you will be noticed for that, if the compressed file ist not a packed text. Some producers of fd-disks use patched versions of PowerPacker, which produce the identifi- cation PP2O ( a big Ohh, not a Zero). You can decrunch such files, if you change the identification with a filemonitor like NewZap back to PP20. Now DocPrint will 'eat' even such texts. You can find such altered texts on the fd-disks of the german serie 'German' and on different catalogs. That's all. I wish you happy printing. Baeri (Hartmut Jaeger) And last, here comes a single formfeed for testing -> -------- Cut here -------- Cut here --------- Cut here ------------- Errorreport / What can the author do better in the next version? To: Baeri-Soft Hartmut Jaeger PD and Shareware for the Amiga Bochumer Strasse 131 D-4350 Recklinghausen Germany From: (Please write in a clear way) Name: Street: Code and city: Country: ( ) I want to become a registered User of DocPrint 2.00 and for that I include a check for US$10,- or the same value in an other currency. ( ) I found Errors. The configuration of my Amiga: ( ) This is, what the error looks like (please report all details): ( ) DocPrint is the greatest thing, that was ever created. But there are some points, which can be made better or there some things, which are missing in this version: