I have a client who was using Network Assistant by 3rd Planet SW in a DOS environment for selecting network printers as well as fonts (landscape, condensed, 8 lpi, etc.) before converting all PCs to Win 95/98. After the conversion, the print utility had to be started in a separate window with mixed results. Sometimes the settings would take, sometimes not. Is anyone aware of any 3rd party software that can be loaded into the Arev session that can handle these on-the-fly print config changes w/o having to hard code the font changes into the reports or making changes through Windows?

You have some obscure printer setup software that doesn't work with Windows, and you expect AREV programmers to fix it, but without changing your application. Hmmmm….

Here's what I'd do.

(a) Throw away the spooler software. Windows wants the job, and won't let your program intervene. So bite the bullet.

(b) write a little program in AREV to set up your printer

PRINTER ON

PRINT CHAR(27):……

PRINTER OFF

© run this program from your VOC LOGON script

(d) write a little printer reset command that the user can run from TCL or from DOS ahead of the print job.

Your users will actually be much, much happier. What sort of printer are you using? How do you control the printer font changes at present?

Steve

I have written a very comprehensive print facilty for Arev - works with NT and Novell or a combination of both. I need to get it running in a few sites (via remote support) before I market it and so I am currently providing it free of charge.

It is currently running sucessfully at three sites here in New Zealand but I need to ensure that it is able to be installed and set up by others without my 'hands on' help.

Anyone interested, please contact Jocelyn Amon at [email protected]

Thanks for you reply. Actually, the real issue is changing fonts between various print jobs. Rather than hard coding the font strings into the programs, they used a 3rd party sw package that would send this string before each job. That way they could print a "regular" report followed by a font change to condensed, for example, for the next report. Most print jobs go to Laserjets.

I have copies of source code for HPIII and HPII written by Lawrence K. Hixson which provide TCL command control over various aspects of HP printer output. They are part of LKHUTILS which I downloaded from the Compuserve forum. They contain the following copyright notice:

23 SEP 1990 | 00:22:18 | BP | HPIII | LKHUTILS ™ v2.00

Copyright 1990, by STI Corp.

Lawrence K. Hixson

PO Box 769, Beltsville, MD 20704-0769, USA, (301) 595-5799

All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced or

utilized in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

without written permission from STI Corp.

Does anyone know anything about STI Corp.? If it can't be freely shared, why would it have been downloadable from the forum? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be pleased to post the code or email it or whatever, as long as it doesn't violate someone's copyright.

Just want to do the right thing.

Bill,

If you cannot contact them at that address, or find them on the Internet, I guess the utilities were posted into a public domain forum as a giveaway, with all that that entails.

I copyright my utilities so someone else cannot call them their own work, or on-sell them. I'd imagine in this case that you'd be free to use the utilities in your application, provided you added a credit in your documentation.

Steve

Hi:

If you had called the phone number, you would have found me! Yes, I'm still alive, but I renamed my company since then.

I have newer routines to share with you, but didn't know how to "share" them since I left CompuServe years ago. I'm happy to share my new and revised AREV 2.1x & 3.1x "toolbox" routines with you (or anyone)! Does anyone out here have a web site devoted to AREV source code & object code like the old CIS forum had? Let me know!

I'm always love giving back to the AREV community, just ask Kurt Baker! I have a new HP set of routines that attempts to give a standard set of Portrait/Landscape reporting modes to HP lasers from within AREV. The routines currently support NT Server 4.0 with an HP5si and the 2000 sheet feeder.

To control network printers using NT 4.0, I found it necessary to use PDISK and a local file to "spool" to and then copy the file to LPT1: when finished. That seemed the only reliable way to do what was simple in Novell with a CAPTURE command and retain the Escape sequences to set the HP modes. The old HPII and HPIII have a newer HP4 routine now. Since we standardize on 8 modes, I extracted the escape sequences into a single program called HPCM (commuter module) that accepts the print mode desired.

Lots of other tools and toys to share as well!

My work email is: [email protected]

Let me know anytime I can help, but email me directly for fastest response rather than posting a message for me here.

Larry

(301) 713-0022 work

(301) 595-5799 home

Why not use the setprinter command in arev? This lets you choose a separate printer for each print job. You need to add printer escape codes to the Printer Definition window, then add the printer definition to your environment, but once that's done you have a complete, printer independent printing system. On a Windows network, just point the printer environment to the LPTx port. On Novell you can put a capture command (suspend exit capture q=myqueue nb nff nt l=3) in the pre print process. (I recommend that you do not capture LPT1 on Novell to avoid conflicts with Windows 95/98 printer drivers.) If you want to change fonts, just print @(f) where f is a value from sysinclude, print_constants. For example, PRINT @(BOLDON$):"Hello World":@(BOLDOFF$)

Good luck,

Dan

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