filePro printing question

[Bill Vermillion]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 02:19:22PM -0500, Dan Snyder thus spoke:
> Hello all,
> 
> The configuration
> ------------------
> Win 98 through Win XP connecting to the SCO server via
> ethernet. All of our outputs were designed for 66 lines per
> page to work on old dot matrix printers. Our PC's are running
> ICETCP by J River to fetch spooled print jobs on the server and
> print them to the printer connected to the client computers
> parallel port and/or an HP Laserjet 2200 on the network. Our
> forms are all plain text, nothing fancy.
> The problem
> ------------

> We would like to be able to print our forms to both dot matrix
> printers and HP laserjets (or compatibles) without creating
> duplicate forms. I'm having problems with printouts creeping
> (not aligning properly on successive pages) due to the default
> of 60 lines per page on lasers and 66 lines per page on the
> dot matrix printers. I tried the initialization string $1b
> &l2a0o6d0e66F recommended in the email below and that did solve
> the creeping problem. However, when using that intialization
> string the first line on the form is not being printed. The
> output starts printing right at the top edge of the paper but
> the text that is printing there is line #2 in the form (line #1
> just disappears and isn't printed). While I could just go into
> all forms and add a blank line at the top (and probably will if
> no one provides a better suggestion) I would rather find out
> what exactly is causing this.

The reason the code you wrote above and was in the old message
didn't work is it wants to print 66 lines per page with the default
line spacing and there is not enough printable space to fit all the
lines on the page, thus the last few lines print on the next page.

> I pulled out a PCL manual and tried to mess with the
> initialization string, but I couldn't find a way to fix it. The
> magic portion of the initialization string is the "0e" which
> sets 0 lines between the top of the paper and the text area.
> If I increase this to "1e" the first line isn't cut off, but
> the creeping comes back. I also tried "1e" and "67F" but that
> didn't make any difference.

You still are limited to the trying to print more lines than there
is space fore.

> Has anyone seen this and know what is causing it? My first
> guess would be that it's some interaction due to ICETCP. Does
> anyone know if that is correct? Any suggestions of other things
> I could try?

You could try this very old initialization line. 
This is from an original HP spooler script on SCO that I modified a
long time ago.

else
	echo "\033E\033&a5L\033&l0o7.27c66F"
#	echo "\033E\033&a2L\033&l0o7.27c66F"

It should work on current printers.

This was set so that you could print from the system and not have
the print go all the way to the left-most printable area.

The operative parts for you above are the Esc & l 0 o 7.27   

That sets the line height to 7.27/48 inch/per/line. Default is
8/48ths or 1/6 inch per line - so that a 10 inch print area would
give you room for 60 lines.   It changes the spacing slightly but
you'll never notice it.   If you have more printable area on your
page than 10, readjust the 7.27 to a larger number.

In case you are wondering abou tth eother codes the 5L sets
the margin from the right in 5.  I had used the 2 but didn't like
the looks.

Give it a shot.  

The nice thing about shrinking the height this way is you can use
the exact same form on a 66 line/page dot matrix and a 60 line/page
laser without having to diddle anything else.  That was one of the
first things I changed years ago when they were creating two forms
for each report - one for dot one for laser.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com