


                            Pass through Print (PTP)
                                  for Windows

                                 Revision 1.00


               Copyright 1993 by Gordon Haff and Bit Masons Consulting.
                              All rights reserved.

                                Freeware program.


          Command:  PTP

          Purpose:  Windows makes it extraordinarily difficult to do a
                    simple pass-through printing job.  What I mean by
                    this is, say, you have an Encapsulated Postscript
                    File you want to send to a Postscript printer.
                    There's no easy way to do this.  Simply printing it
                    to your Postscript printer using normal Windows
                    print commands will definately not work.  One
                    alternative is to drop to DOS and use the COPY
                    command, but this is an ugly solution and can be
                    slow besides.

                    PTP sends a file directly to a printer port,
                    bypassing all Windows print services.  This is a
                    bit naughty and outside the philosophy of Windows,
                    I suppose, but it gets the job done quickly and
                    easily.

          Syntax:   PTP

          Prereqs:  100% IBM Compatible PC running DOS 3.0 or higher
                    and Windows 3.1

          Archive:  PTP100.ZIP

          New Feature Summary:

                    This is an initial release.






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                         ĳ         o    
                              Ŀ   Association of
                                         Shareware
                           ĳ    o        Professionals
                         ĳ        
                                   MEMBER


          PTP 1.00                                                    2



                                     DISCLAIMER

          The author hereby disclaims all warranties relating to these
          products, whether express or implied, including without
          limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness
          for a particular purpose. The author cannot and will not be
          liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or
          similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if
          the author or an authorized agent has been advised of the
          possibility of such damages.  In no event shall the liability
          for any damages ever exceed the price paid for the license to
          use the software, regardless of the form and/or extent of the
          claim.  The user of this program bears all risk as to the
          quality and performance of the software.

                                       LICENSE

          PTP is distributed as free, copyrighted software.  What
          this means is that you can use these programs for as long as you
          like without cost or obligation.  What you cannot do is to sell
          this software or make a profit off of it (except as described
          below) without the express written permission of the author.

          PTP is the sole property of Gordon Haff.  This program may
          be freely copied and transferred to individual parties.  It may
          be posted on Bulletin Board systems (BBS) for electronic access
          as long as NO FEE is charged for its distribution except for
          private BBS operations that charge a regular user subscription
          fee.  Computer information services such as Compuserve (CIS),
          Genie, and Byte Information Exchange (BIX) are authorized to
          post this product for subscriber access.  ASMPROC may be
          distributed on diskette only by 1) disk distributors/vendors who
          are associate members of the Association of Shareware
          Professionals (ASP) or 2) users groups which do not charge more
          than a nominal fee ($5) to cover the costs of distribution.  Any
          changes to these policies must be made in writing by the author.

          This software is produced by a member of the Association of
          Shareware Professionals (ASP).  The ASP wants to make sure that
          the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to
          resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by
          contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP
          Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP
          member, but does not provide technical support for members'
          products.  Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Rd.,
          Muskegon, MI 49442-9427 or send a Compuserve message via
          easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536.

          PTP 1.00                                                    3

                                  TECHNICAL SUPPORT


          Since this program is a freebie, unlike the shareware programs
          for which I request a registration fee, I'm not going to make any
          guarantees here with respect to bug fixes or other technical
          support.  Having said that, I do like my programs to be as
          bug-free as possible, so feel free to report any problems which
          you run across.


               Contact via:

                    Channel 1 BBS            (617) 354-8873
                    Compuserve User ID#      72561,2637  (See Note 1)
                    InterNet/ARPANET         72561.2637@compuserve.com

                    U.S. Mail                3205 Windsor Ridge Dr.
                                             Westboro MA 01581
                    Telephone                (508) 898-3321 (after 6pm
                                                          Eastern time)

          The above are roughly in order of preference (i.e. how quickly
          I'm likely to see your message and be able to respond).  I check
          Channel One almost daily and the other electronic services at
          least weekly in most cases.  In addition, I monitor the Interlink
          and the PCRelay Shareware relays through Channel One.

          Note 1:
          When contacting me via Compuserve, please use the Easyplex mail
          system since I do not regularly monitor any of the IBM SIG
          message bases.

          PTP 1.00                                                    4


          1.0     Why PTP?
          ----------------

          There frequently comes a time when I need to print
          Encapsulated Postscript files directly to a Postscript
          printer under Windows (*).  In their infinite wisdom,
          Microsoft hasn't gotten around to providing an easy way to do
          this from within Windows.  In fact, they haven't provided ANY
          way which either myself or a lot of other people have ever
          been able to figure out.

          You certainly can't just use a Postscript printer driver in
          the Print Manager or you'll get an Encapsulted (Encapsulated
          Postscript File) which is almost certainly not what you want.
          Trying to use a Generic/Text Only driver doesn't seem to work
          either for some reason.  So you start getting clever: "How
          about copying the file to PRN: from within Windows?"  Turns
          out the smart guys at Microsoft thought of that one -- you
          can't copy to a hardware device from within Windows.

          So, the only real alternative seems to be to start up a DOS
          window and do a COPY from DOS.  This is generally a workable,
          albeit not especially elegant solution.  The problem is that
          for various reasons having to do with PIF file settings and
          various other things, the print jobs can go rather slowly
          (even by glacial Postscript printing standards).  You may see
          the "Waiting" light or display on the printer light up a lot
          and sometimes no amount of fiddling with your DOS PIF file
          seems to help.

          I got tired of all this and wrote PTP which solves the
          problem for me.  It may for you as well.


          (*) I use Postscript as an example throughout this manual
          since that's what I most commonly use, but all the same
          principles and issues pertain equally to dumping other
          formats such as HP directly to their corresponding printer
          types and PTP will work equally well with any of these other
          types.

          PTP 1.00                                                    5


          2.0     How does it Work?
          -------------------------

          Just set up PTP like any other Windows program in a Utilities
          or Accessories Group or wherever else you want to put it.  If
          you don't know how to add programs to Windows, consult the
          Windows manual or your local Windows guru (who will probably
          be very annoyed at you for not just looking in the manual).

          You then startup PTP and are presented with a fairly
          self-explanatory window.  You can type in the filename of the
          file to print or just use the Browse button which will popup
          a standard Windows file selection box.

          You choose the printer you want to go to by clicking on the
          appropriate LPT port on the right-hand side.  Theoretically,
          PTP should also work with printers attached to COM ports but
          there aren't too many of these and I had no way of testing,
          so I just put in LPT (parallel) ports on this go-round.

          Then hit the Print button.  PTP will try to open the
          specified printer port and will bang characters down the line
          to the printer as quickly as the printer will accept them.

          While the print job is progressing, PTP brings up a little
          Cancel box for the print job.  Hit cancel at any time to
          scrub the job.  Depending upon what's going on down in the
          bits and bytes, PTP may take a few seconds to acknowledge
          that you've pressed anything.  Just be patient.  At this
          point, PTP stops sending stuff out to the printer and returns
          control to you.  The printer may churn on a bit longer but
          will eventually timeout and go idle.  Note that since none of
          this is going through stndard Windows services, the printer
          doesn't receive any special abort codes or anything like
          that; the program just stops sending data.

          For the techies out there, what PTP specifically does is:

            o  Opens a port with an OpenComm call
            o  Reads a small block from the file
            o  Sends that block character by character with
               TransmitCommChar, cycling on each character until
               it gets through
            o  It then reads another block and continues until the
               entire file is read or the job is cancelled

          PTP was specifically written and tested to operate with a
          printer hardwaired to an individual PC either directly or
          through a mechanical or electronic switch.



          PTP 1.00                                                    6

          4.0     Technical and Acknowledgments.
          --------------------------------------

          PTP 1.00 was developed using Borland C++ 3.1 and the Object
          Windows (OWL) Application Framework.

          The development environment was a Dasher 386/25 and a Gateway
          2000 486DX2-66 running Workgroup for Windows 3.1 and Windows
          3.1 respectively.


          5.0     Other Programs by Gordon Haff and Bit Masons Consulting:
          -----------------------------------------------------------------

          Directory Freedom (DF):

              Offers users a fast, compact alternative to DOS Shells which
            provides 1) selective file and directory operations; 2) a
            scrollable environment for examining files and directories; 3)
            user-defined keys which can operate upon highlighted files
            (e.g. by defining an editor).  All this in a program which
            takes less than 35KB since it is written in assembler! Easily
            customized through an external configuration program. A "look-
            and-feel" similar to PC Mag's DR, but does much more.  Now with
            SmartViewers and many more exciting new features.
                         Shareware: $25 Registration
                         Latest version: 4.60 (DF460.ZIP)


          the last word:

            'the last word' is a quotations trivia game in which 1 to 4
            players compete against each other and their own high scores in
            identifying the source of quotations and completing partial
            quotes.  Most answers are entered free-form and are matched
            against a set of acceptable responses with a sophisticated
            pattern-recognition algorithm.  'the last word' runs in text
            mode -- including on mono displays -- and offers a high level
            of user configurability.
                         Shareware: $15 Registration
                         Latest version: 1.00  (LWORD100.ZIP)


          Convert:

            Unit conversion calculator for Windows 3.1.  Comes with a data
            file containing a large number of common (and not so common)
            conversions in categories such as length, speed, pressure,
            volume, and time.  The data file is a plain ASCII text file so
            the user may add or delete units to best fit his individual
            needs.
                           Shareware: $15 Registration
                           Latest version: 2.0  (CVT200.ZIP)



          PTP 1.00                                                    7

          X-Ray Viewers:

            The X-Ray Viewers provide a scrollable environment for
            examining the contents of various types of archive files and
            allows the user to view those contents by piping them to LIST.
            In other words, you can read a text file contained within, for
            example, a .ZIP file without extracting the archive.  In
            combination with the SmartViewer functions in DF, the X-Ray
            viewers make the examination of .ZIP, .ARJ, .LZH, and .ZOO
            files almost automatic (just highlight a file and press
            <Enter>).  "Freeware" but requires the appropriate archive
            program and LIST to function.
                           Free, copyrighted software
                           Latest revision: 1.10  (XRAY110.ZIP)


          Name Date (ND)

            This program can be set to a user-defined function key and
            will rename the highlighted file to a new name which is
            derived from the current date. For example, FILENAME.TXT would
            be renamed to 891015.TXT if the date were Oct 15, 1989.  It
            appends a letter to the base name (e.g. 891015A.TXT,
            891015B.TXT, etc.) if the "dated name" already exists.  I find
            this very useful for handling message-base files from BBS's.
            Version 2.00 adds a great deal of flexibility with
            command-line switches.
                           Free, copyrighted software
                           Latest revision: 2.0;
                           Archive name: NAMD200.ZIP (ND200.ZIP on Compuserve)


          MAKETEST:

            Command-line utility to create test files.  Lets you create
            any number of test files with user-specified names and sizes.
            Automatically can add characters to avoid duplicate names.
            This is an easy way to create something like 100 zero-length
            files.  Handy for users or programmers who want to test a
            program's capabilities.
                           Free, copyrighted software with QB source
                           Latest version: 1.0  (MKTST100.ZIP)


          These programs and others (Multi-Edit macros for use with Qmail
          Deluxe, for example) are available on many fine bulletin boards.
          The latest releases are always available on Channel One.   If you
          just have to get a copy of one or more of these programs and
          can't find one, however, I can send them out for a nominal media
          and postage charge.

          PTP 1.00                                                    8

          6.0     History:
          ---------------

          Rev. 1.00      Initial Release
