DOWNLOAD Version 1.8 Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts Elfring Soft Fonts P.O. Box 61 Wasco, IL 60183 312-377-3520 CIS: 32417,3437 TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY....................................................... 1 REQUIREMENTS.................................................. 1 FONT CHARACTERISTICS.......................................... 1 RUNNING DOWNLOAD.............................................. 2 ERROR MESSAGES................................................ 5 COMMON PROBLEMS............................................... 5 DISTRIBUTION.................................................. 6 WARRANTY...................................................... 6 ORDER FORM.................................................... 7 SUMMARY DOWNLOAD.EXE is an IBM PC utility program that manages the process of downloading soft fonts to a LaserJet, DeskJet, or compatible printers. DOWNLOAD can also select fonts as they are being sent. DOWNLOAD can send a font, or group of fonts, through the standard parallel printer MS-DOS devices to your LaserJet or DeskJet printer. You have optional control over the soft font ID number, whether the font is permanent or temporary, and whether it is a primary or sec- ondary font. A list of fonts may be sent to the printer by specify- ing the individual fonts names in an ASCII text file. All fonts resident in your laser may be optionally deleted before new fonts are downloaded, or you can reset the printer first. This package is now distributed as shareware and you are expected to register it if you use it! You may try this package out for a period not to exceed 15 days. Registration costs $15 and bring you a number of benefits. See the end of this documentation file for a registra- tion form. Elfring Soft Fonts now offers a memory resident (TSR) version of DOWNLOAD with features you won't believe. This version finds your soft fonts and presents a list of them for you. You can download or select any font on either a laser printer or a DeskJet. Font memory requirements are shown and the program keeps track of all fonts that have been sent to your printer. Finally, you can change printer orrienta- tion, character size, default font, or reset the print. TSR Download is $30.00 by itself or $45.00 with a set of soft fonts, (Helv & Roman portrait 8, 10, 12, 14 point medium/bold/italic + 18 point bold), plus our 28 page soft font manual. (The manual explains all there is to know about what a soft fonts is, how they are named, and how to select them!) REQUIREMENTS DOWNLOAD requires a minimum of 128K of memory, an HP LaserJet, DeskJet, or compatible printer, and a parallel port to talk to the printer. Parallel printer ports LPT1:, LPT2:, LPT3: are supported by the program. FONT CHARACTERISTICS All soft fonts have three characteristics associated with them. Each font must have a unique ID number assigned to it. This lets you select a soft font through software commands. Each font must be defined as either temporary or permanent. Temporary fonts are deleted whenever the LaserJet is reset and are thus not as widely used as permanent ones since most software that controls the LaserJet sends a reset command out first, (deleting all temporary fonts). Finally, a font may be defined as either primary or sec- ondary. (Note that only one primary and one secondary font can exist at one time and you don not have to have a primary or sec- ondary font.) 1 The LaserJet lets you switch between primary and secondary fonts with simple control characters. Control-N selects the secondary font, while control-O selects the primary font. Embedding these characters in your text file will let you switch between fonts. Fonts that have ID numbers assigned to them may be selected based on that ID number. To do this you send an (#X to the printer, where stands for the escape key (1BH), and # is replaced by the ASCII soft font ID number. (To select soft font ID 15 you would send (15X. Finally fonts can be selected by font metrics. In this method you describe the font. A sample Times-Roman selection string would be: &l0O(0U(s1p12v0s0b5T (12 point, por- trait, medium weight, US ASCII, Times-Roman). This method is too complex to explain here. We do offer an inexpensive Soft Font Manual that explains everything there is to know about how to name, use, select, and recognize soft fonts if you want more information. The DOWNLOAD program is designed to send soft fonts to the laser printer and to help you manage all these font characteristics. You can select the font ID number, and font status at the same time that you download the font. You can also make list files to manage the process of sending a number of soft fonts to your printer at one time. Finally, soft fonts may be archived into a common file and automatically extracted for downloading. RUNNING DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD is easy to use. The only thing you need to remember is that DOWNLOAD will automatically prompt you with a brief descrip- tion of how to use it if you want it to. Simply type DOWNLOAD followed by a carriage return. The program will print a short explanation of its operation and options as shown below: Send soft fonts to a LaserJet or DeskJet printer, V1.8 Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts Use ÄÄ> download fontname [device ID Äoptions] where: everything the between '[]'s is optional and... fontname = the name of the font to download or the name of a list of fonts to download preceded by an '@' character device = LPT1, LPT2, or LPT3 ID = starting ID number to assign font to (0 Ä 32767) options = T to make font temporary, P to make font primary S to make font secondary, Q for quiet operation, D for delete all fonts prior to downloading, or R to reset the printer. When optional arguments are not present, download defaults to: LPT1, ID = 0, permanent font, and font is NOT selected. 2 For example: download he100rpn.usp lpt1: 5 Ätp download @font.lst Äq download od300rpn.usp 1000 Äsq LPT2 To run DOWNLOAD you must specify either the name of the soft font to send to your printer, or the name of a disk file that contains a list of soft fonts to send to the printer. You can optionally specify the device to send the file to, LPT1, LPT2, or LPT3. In addition, you can optionally control the three font attributes, (ID number, permanent/temporary, primary/secondary), specified above. To invoke DOWNLOAD type: download yourfont [port ID# -options] All items between the "[" and "]" characters are optional. This means you do not have to include them. Note that the "[" and "]" characters are not actually used in a command. Also note that these optional items can be specified in any order. So, to down- load a Times-Roman 24 point bold font you would enter: download tr240bpn.usp The DOWNLOAD program will find that file, (if it doesn't exist DOWNLOAD will let you know), and defaults to: printer port LPT1, soft font ID 0, and permanent status. The font will not be selÄ ected as either primary or secondary. The screen will look as follows: Send soft fonts to a LaserJet or DeskJet printer, V1.8 Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts Sending font tr240bpn.usp with ID 0, 12427 bytes Sent 1 file, with a total of 12427 bytes. A more complicated command might involve using a different printÄ er port and assigning a soft font ID number. For example: download tr100bpn.usp 1000 lpt2 Äs sends the bold faced TimesÄRoman font to the LaserJet via LPT2: and assigns it font ID 1000, permanent and secondary status. The secondary status lets you select this font in a document by emÄ bedding a controlÄN, (you can change back to your primary font with a controlÄO). DOWNLOAD is capable of using a list of file names created with any ASCII text editor. To do this type: download @fonts.lst 10 This instructs the program to find the disk file "fonts.lst". This file is assumed to contain a list of font file names to send to the LaserJet. All files will be sent in the order they appear in the list. For example, if the file "fonts.lst" looks as folÄ lows: 3 he100rpn.usp he100bpn.usp he100ipn.usp he180bpn.usp he300bpn.usp then the command "download @fonts.lst 10" will load all five fonts to your LaserJet through LPT1. The "he100rpn.usp" font will be assigned font ID 10 and loaded first. Font "he100bpn.usp" will be loaded next with font ID 11. This process will continue sequentially until font "he300bpn.usp" is sent to the printer as font ID 14. All fonts will be assigned permanent status. The screen will look as follows after the downloading process is finished: Send soft fonts to a LaserJet or DeskJet printer, V1.8 Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts Sending font he100rpn.usp with ID 0, 12427 bytes Sending font he100bpn.usp with ID 1, 18834 bytes Sending font he100ipn.usp with ID 2, 33754 bytes Sending font he180bpn.usp with ID 3, 48531 bytes Sending font he300bpn.usp with ID 4, 68929 bytes Sent 5 files, with a total of 133944 bytes. For a more detailed explanation of soft font ID numbers, and font status see you LaserJet user's manual. Another useful option is the "D" command. This command lets you delete all soft fonts resident in your laser printer prior to downloading. For example, if you have limited font memory you can lose track of how many fonts have been sent to the laser printer. Rather than blindly sending more fonts, (which can result in a "20" error), you can tell DOWNLOAD to delete all soft fonts first, and then send the new fonts to the printer. download @batch.lst 1 -d Finally, the "quiet" option lets you disable much of the screen output from DOWNLOAD. This is particularly useful with batch files since you are probably not interested in file statistics when downloading a batch of files. To use the quiet option you would type: download @batch.lst 1000 -qt This would result in the following display: Send soft fonts to a LaserJet or DeskJet printer, V1.8 Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts Note that the "-t" option used above would give all soft fonts listed above "temporary" status. They would automatically be erased after the first reset command is sent the the laser printer. 4 ERROR MESSAGES DOWNLOAD automatically checks the status of your laser printer before sending anything to it. If the printer is off, not con- nected, deselected, or out of paper DOWNLOAD will display an er- ror message. For example, if your printer was out of paper you would see: download cp300rpn.usp Send soft fonts to a LaserJet or DeskJet printer, V1.8 Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts Sending font cp300rpn.usp with ID 0 Printer I/O error Printer out of paper Abort, Retry, Ignore? Answer with the appropriate letter (A/R/I) followed by a carriage return. This process lets you select the printer or add more paper to correct the problem. COMMON PROBLEMS 1) MY LASER PRINTER WORKS FINE NORMALLY. HOWEVER, WHEN I USE DOWNLOAD TO SEND A SOFT FONT TO IT THE FONT IS GARBLED, DOESN'T APPEAR, OR WIERD THINGS HAPPEN. This is a common problem and is almost certainly due to bad hardware! When a soft font is downloaded your printer will be receiving data at the maximum possible speed. If you do not have a printer cable that meets minimum specifications, or if your parallel printer port is marginal the problems mentioned above may occur. For the record: your parallel printer port cable should be 6 feet long or less and made of quality materials. You should NOT have a switch box in series with this cable! If your cable is OK try switching to a different parallel port. These ports are easy to damage with static electricity. They may appear to work- but they fail during high speed transfers. 2) I DOWNLOAD A SOFT FONT AND MAKE IT MY PRIMARY FONT, JUST AS YOUR MANUAL SAYS. IF I COPY FILES TO THE PRINTER THEY PRINT IN THAT FONT. IF I USE MY WORD PROCESSOR I ALWAYS SEEM TO RETURN BACK TO MY DEFAULT INTERNAL FONT (COURIER). The first thing a word processor does, (before printing anything), is to reset the printer. Resetting a laser printer (or the DeskJet) auto- matically causes the printer to return back to the default font, (Courier). The only practical way around this problem is to provide the word processor with a printer driver that tells it how to use soft fonts. 3) WHEN DOWNLOADING A NUMBER OF SOFT FONTS MY PRINTER STOPS WORKING AND DISPLAYS A FLASHING "20" ON THE LCD DISPLAY. Congatulations, you have run out of memory in your printer. If you are sending new fonts to the printer try deleting the old ones before sending the new ones. (-D option in Download) If the problem occurs regularly you should start looking for a 1 meg memory add on board. 5 4) THE SOFT FONT ID NUMBERS I ASSIGN WITH DOWNLOAD DO NOT MATCH THE NUMBERS SHOWN ON MY SAMPLE FONT PRINT SHEET. The Soft Font ID numbers assigned by DOWNLOAD can be used to select soft fonts. However, these ID numbers have NO relationship to the numbers displayed on a font print sheet. Font print sheet numbers always start at 1 and go up. Soft font ID numbers can range from 0 - 65,535. There is no way to display a Soft Font ID number on a print sheet. Ignore the numbers shown on these sheets. 5) MY WORD PROCESSOR DOESN'T SEEM TO WORK WELL WITH SOFT FONTS. WHAT CAN I DO? At present, the following word processors will work well with most soft fonts. Note that most of these word processors come with printer drivers that support common soft font sets. (Some of these word processors build their own printer drivers automatically.) WordStar 2000 v3.0, WordStar 5.0, Word 4.0 & 5.0, Word Perfect 4.1 & 5.0, PC Write 2.71 & 3.02. DISTRIBUTION This program is provided on a trial basis as shareware to all who are interested in it. To use this product on other than a trial basis you must register it for $15.00. Copies of this program may be freely exchanged as long as no fee is charged for them. Please distribute this package with BOTH this documentation file and the executable program. This program and documentation are Copyright 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Elfring Soft Fonts. All rights are reserved. Commercial use without registration is strictly prohibited. We offer a large number of different downloadable fonts including Roman, Helv, Century, Rockford, Broadway, Script, Square, Old English, Univer- sity, Courier, Line Draw, Prestige, Letter Gothic, Casual, LCD, Lotus fonts, Symbol Sets, and title fonts for both laser printers and the DeskJet. If you don't see the font you are looking for, call or write me. I am always creating new fonts. I also do inexpensive custom fonts. In addition I have a number of soft font utility programs including: download- send and select fonts to a LaserJet or DeskJet, dispfont- dis- play a sample sheet of a soft font, and TSR Download- an interactive easy to use soft font management program. For more information on these in- expensive downloadable soft fonts for your LaserJet or DeskJet contact me at the address listed below. WARRANTY Elfring Soft Fonts specifically disclaims all other warranties, ex- pressed or implied, including but not limited to, implied war- ranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose with respect to defects in the disk or documentation, and the program License granted herein. In no event shall Elfring Soft Fonts be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. 6 SHAREWARE REGISTRATION FORM To register this copy of DOWNLOAD and to receive a copy of my LaserJet or DeskJet font brochure, please fill out the following form, and mail it along with a check for $15.00 to: Elfring Soft Fonts P.O. Box 61 Wasco, Illinois 60183 312-377-3520 CIS: 72417,3437 Make all checks payable to: Elfring Soft Fonts. Please register my copy of DOWNLOAD V1.8: Name: _________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________ City, State, Zip: _________________________________________ Comments: _________________________________________ Source of public domain version: _________________________ Printer: [ ] LaserJet, [ ] DeskJet, [ ] Compatible