Shareware Grab Bag/Shareware Grab Bag.iso/015/ljpr.arc/PR.DOC

Text File | 1986-12-16 | 19KB | 442 lines

                              Documentation for Pr.Com



          Purpose:

          This program is a utility to print documents on an HP LaserJet
          Printer.  The document is divided, by the program, into pages
          based on FF's or line count or a combination of both.  It will
          print the pages one or four on a sheet in portrait orientation
          and two on a sheet in landscape.  It will also print one-sided,
          two-sided, or in a booklet format.  It will handle letter and
          legal size paper.  It will expand tabs, such as used by
          assemblers and compilers in producing listings, with blanks.

          Will run from command line parameters or interactively.  It is a
          generic MSDOS program.

          The program has proven useful in printing documents prepared by a
          word processor on both sides of the paper or two or four pages on
          each side in the form of a booklet.  Files may be printed with
          the line printer font side-by-side in landscape format (assuming
          the printer has the font) and if desired on both sides of the
          paper.


          Input File Format:

          This program will print plain, vanilla Ascii files.  It will also
          work with files containing LJ escape codes.  It has been used
          with MS Word list files (generated as Print File output) and
          presumably will work with the list output generated by other word
          processor.  Graphics have not been tested, but will probably
          work.

          The major rule is that the file must fit into the form specified.
          If one page is printed on a sheet, this simply means that the
          printing must fit in the 8.5" available.  If form feeds are used
          to determine page length, there must be no more lines on a page
          than will fit in the 10.6" or 13.6" allowed.  For four pages
          printed on a page, the rules are the same with the limits halved.
          For two-up landscape printing, the limits are 5.3" and 6.8" wide
          by 8.5" long.  So do not try anything but one-up printing unless
          the file has been written to fit on a smaller page given the font
          being used.

          The next rule relates to font selection.  When printing single
          sided (1, 2, or 4 up) without the reverse collate option, the
          pages will be printed in order.  However, for double sided and













          booklet printing, the pages are NOT printed in order.  You are
          permitted to select a font which will be selected at the top of
          EVERY page (the default is Courier in the proper orientation).
          Any printing which is to be done with a different font, must
          select the font on the page in which it occurs.  A font selection
          on one page will not carry over to another.

          In order to implement, two and four pages on a sheet, the program
          uses margins.  When use print with either of those options, you
          may not set or reset any of the margins.  For four-up printing,
          for the pages printed on the lower half the page, it uses a
          vertical motion to locate the first line.  It is not permitted
          for the page being printed to use absolute vertical (row)
          addressing, however, relative addressing is permitted.  It is
          permitted to push the cursor (LJ+) at the start of a page and pop
          it later in the page to return to the logical top of page.  It
          would be bad form if the pushed position were not pop'ed
          somewhere before the end of the page.

          In order to handle the random page printing required by some
          options, the entire file will be read into memory before
          printing.  This imposes a limit on file length.  The program uses
          about 53K bytes in addition to that used by MSDos for code and
          data.  The entire rest of memory is available and is allocated in
          chunks of 16384 bytes each.  The input file must fit in the
          memory so allocated.  Fairly large files are possible, but there
          is a limit depending on your memory size.


          Output Formats:

          There are twelve formats produced by the program.  As they are
          combinations of three parameters, the description will be ordered
          by parameter.

          Single sided format is the simplest from one perspective.  The
          file is printed in a single pass on one side of the paper.  The
          user may request 1, 2, or 4 pages on each physical page.  The
          option for 2 will be in landscape orientation, the others in
          portrait.

          Double sided format will print on both sides of the paper.  The
          same options of 1, 2, or 4 pages per side of a sheet are
          available.  The left page(s) on a side is the lower page
          number(s) than the right page(s).  Similarly, the upper pages are
          lower page numbers than the lower pages.  By default, if you
          staple (or use a hole punch) on the long left side of the sheet
          for portrait printing or the short left side for landscape, the
          pages are order so that you may use it as a book turning the
          pages.  If the Z-fold option is used, you would staple or punch













          the paper on the top and turn the pages as with Z-folded paper.
          This might be used with 2-up program listing when put in a three-
          ring binder, the pages will be ordered properly.

          The booklet format is the most complex to explain.  If only one
          page is printed on a side, it is identical with the double-sided
          format.  When two pages are printed side by side in landscape
          format, the result may be stapled in the middle (the margin
          between the two pages) and folded as a booklet.  It could also
          have been cut, folded over, and punched to fit in a binder.  When
          4 pages are printed on a side, the result should be cut between
          the upper pages and lower pages (as seen when the paper is in
          portrait orientation).  Then the lower pages should be placed on
          top of the upper pages and stapled between left and right pages.
          This may then be folded into a booklet.  It is probably easier to
          understand this after trying it.  It would be well if on your
          first trial of a four-up booklet the pages were either numbered
          or you could easily tell their order.  This would help a bit in
          verifying that you understand the instructions.


          Output Collation

          The program was written to work with a forward collator by
          default.  If your printer does not have a forward collator, you
          may specify the reverse collator options.  For single sided
          printing, the pages will be printed in reverse or and the
          resulting stack will be in the normally desired order.  For the
          other two formats, the order of printing will be chosen so that
          the output of the second pass will be in the normally desired
          order.


          Soft Fonts:

          Soft fonts present no problems.  However, one must NOT put the
          soft fonts in the file to be printed.  There is no guarantee when
          any part of the file will be copied to the printer.  Page
          allocation will not work properly.  The proper action is to down
          load the fonts before hand using some other utility.


          Printer Selection:

          By default, the name PRN is used to access the printer.  If your
          system uses a different name for the LJ, you may use the
          Command.Com command SET to set the parameter LJ to the name to
          use.  For example: SET LJ=COM2 will cause the program to use COM2
          for the printer.  As a side effect, you may name a disc file in














          the SET command.  If the file exists, it will be overwritten and
          if it does not, it will be created.


          Command Line Invocation:

             PR <filename> <type><args>

               <type> = S#-singlesided, D#-doublesided, B#-booklet
                    # = 1, 2 or 4 pages/page

               <args> = L long paper(14"),
                        T expand tabs
                        C=# number of copies
                        P=# maximum lines per page
                        Z Z-fold
                        - Reverse Collator

                        U for USASCII or R8 for Roman-8
                        F=font type
                            C   Courier
                            L   Lineprinter
                            T10 TimesRoman 10
                            T12 TimesRoman 12
                            T8  TimesRoman 8
                            H   Helvetica 14.4
                   or   F/<codes>

          If only the file name is specified, ie., no type or arguments,
          the type and arguments will be requested interactively as
          described later.  If the type or any argument is specified, the
          defaults will be used for the rest.  The default type is single
          sided with one logical page per sheet.

          The parameters may be separated by spaces or commas or semicolons
          (between the program name and the file name, you must use a
          space).  All spaces, commas and semicolons will be ignored.  The
          argument <type> must precede all other arguments and specifies
          the format as described earlier.  The 'T' option will cause all
          tabs encounter to be expand as blanks.  It will assume a tab stop
          at column 9, 17, and every 8 columns thereafter.  The 'C' option,
          for example C=5, specifies the number of copies to make.  It uses
          the LJ copies argument and does not make multiple passes.  The
          'P' option should be used ONLY if the pages are not defined by
          FF's in the file.  When the indicated number of lines has
          occurred since the previous page break (whether caused by line
          count or FF), a page break is made.  Z-fold was discussed under
          double sided output format above.  The reverse collator '-'
          option was also discussed earlier.  If an option is not
          specified, the defaults will be used for that option: 11" paper,













          no tab expansion, one copy, use FF's to define pages, not Z-
          folded, and forward collator.

          As was mentioned earlier, when each logical page is printed, the
          default font is selected.  If none is specified, the Courier font
          of the proper orientation is selected with the Roman-8 character
          set.  The U option may be used to select the USASCII character
          set.  The font may be specified with a F= option specifying the
          type face and for TmsRmn, the point size.  Another option allows
          the specification of the escape sequence to use.  This option is
          specified as F/ followed by the sequence which is terminated by
          the end of the parameter list or another /.  If another slash
          occurs, other arguments may follow.  Since, esc characters cannot
          be easily entered in commands, the following procedure is used.
          Since all of the LJ escape sequences which may be used have an &
          or ( or ) or * as the second character and these characters do
          not occur within a valid escape sequence (binary types of escape
          sequences such as graphics or font definitions are not permitted
          in this context), whenever one of these four characters occur, an
          escape character is inserted before it.

          Interactive Arguments Specification:

          If the file name was not specified on the command line, it will
          be requested interactively.  A full path name or a name relative
          to the current directory is permitted.  If the file is not found,
          an error will be reported and you may re-enter the name.
          Entering a null line for the file name will terminate the
          program.  This allows you to exit when you, for any reason,
          cannot enter the name of the file you want or change your mind.

          You will be asked for the value of each of the other parameters.
          The request will indicate, in parentheses, the default value.
          Pressing return will select the default value.  Most parameters
          require only a single key stroke.  If the question is a yes or no
          questions, type only Y or N.  Do not enter the carriage return
          also.  The use of upper or lower case is insignificant.  Note
          that the Z-fold question is asked only if it is significant, ie.,
          double sided.  The questions asking the number of copies and the
          numbers of line on a page, if not defaulted, require a number to
          be entered and do require a carriage return to terminate.

          The default font question also may accept multiple characters and
          requires a carriage return.  The default, Courier, is selected by
          entering only a return.  The other fonts are selected by entering
          only their first letter.  For TimesRoman, you will be asked for
          the font size in points.  This response must have a carriage
          return also.  If you elect to enter an escape sequence, it must
          begin with a slash and may be a full line long.  A terminating
          slash is optional.  By default, 6 lines per inch are selected on













          each page, unless the line printer font is selected, in which
          case it will be 8 lines per inch.  You may override this is the
          escape sequence, but this will require you to use the escape
          sequence to select the font as well.


          Operation:

          Once the file name and arguments have been accepted, the program
          reads the file.  While reading the file, it will display on the
          screen, the number of bytes read every time 16384 more bytes have
          been read.  It will then allocate pages.  You will see the page
          numbers being allocated displayed on the screen.  Next comes the
          first pass of printing.  It will print the back side of each
          sheet first (for single sided, it is the front side).  While
          doing this the page numbers being printed will be displayed.  For
          one-up printing, a single number is shown, for two-up the two
          pages side by side are shown, and for four-up, the four page
          numbers are shown as they are printed.  For single and double
          sided printing, the same line is reused to display the page
          number for the next sheet.  This is kind of a progress indicator.
          For booklet format, when more than one logical page is printed on
          a side, a new line is used for each sheet.  This is because the
          page numbers are in a strange looking order and one could not
          judge the progress through the file if all of the numbers
          overwrote one another.

          For twosided or booklet printing, when the first pass is
          complete, you will be instructed to replace the paper in the
          printer.  (Note: the printer will probably have a few sheets left
          to print after the instructions are displayed, wait until the
          form feed light is out) Be careful to replace it as instructed.
          The top of the page is the top as one would see it when reading
          the printing.  You must always put the paper in the input tray
          with the printed side up.  The printer prints on the side facing
          down in the supply tray.  Do NOT rearrange the pages, they are in
          the correct order.  The only exception is if you specified the
          reverse collator option backwards, you must arrange the sheets in
          the reverse order before replacing them.  Pressing return on the
          keyboard will start the printing again.

          When the printing is done, you will be asked whether to reprint
          any pages.  It is hoped that this will never be needed, however,
          it has been needed a few times.  The major problem in printing on
          both sides is when a double feed occurs.  If two sheets are feed
          as if they were one, the order of the sheets is disarranged
          thereafter.  Rather than repeating the entire job, you may
          reprint the last portion of the job.  The question is answered
          with a Y or N or return(means No).  Do not enter a return after
          the Y or N.  If Yes, you will be asked how many initial pages to













          skip.  This is the number of physical sheets of paper which do
          NOT require reprinting.  The printing will be repeated from that
          spot.  If zero is entered, the entire document is reprinted.
          This is one way to obtain multiple copies which do not require
          further collation.  In my experience, the double feed occurs most
          often if the paper has not been properly aligned in the input
          tray after it is replaced.  Careful alignment of the sheets being
          replaced with each other and with any blank paper in the tray
          already reduces the chances of this problem.

          NOTE:  In some cases, one more sheet will be printed for each
          copy in pass 2 than was printed in pass 1.  In double sided
          printed with one logical page on a side, if there are an odd
          number of pages, this will occur.  It will also occur in other
          situations of a similar nature.  It will not occur when the
          reverse collator option is set.  The program assumes that there
          will be blank paper available on pass two for the extra sheet.
          If there is not, the printer will stop with error code 11 and you
          must merely add paper and continue.