General Printer Utilities Contents: -----Print Spooling -----Print-To-Disk -----Printer Control -----Other -----Screen Printing =================== -----Print Spooling [DMP] DMP 2.05 (McGuire, Terry ASP; $29) is a true print spooler to which you can direct printer output so that you can do other work while the printing is being done. The difference between the usual print buffer and a spooler is that a buffer program requires you to allocate as much RAM for buffering printer output as you expect to print whereas a spooler uses disk files rather than RAM to store the printer output and, in this case, only takes 12k of RAM for the program itself. DMP will also direct printer output to a disk file as well as to extended or expanded memory. DMP will emulate several printers, as well. [DSII] Disk Spool II 4.06 (Budget Software Co. ASP; $44) is a 14k-48k memory resident print spooler. It spools to disk or to memory and will print to any of the four standard ports. It can be configured to drive four printers at the same time. It also features interrupt driven despooling. A pop-up menu controls spooling/despooling, viewing of spooled data, repositioning printer, and more. Other features include expanded and extended memory support, the ability to pop-up over graphical displays, and much more. It is compatible with Windows 3 and networks. [MSPOOL2] MSPool2 multi-spooler: spools up to 4 printers at once. [PCONTRL] PControl (Sneed, Steve; $0-$10) is a controller for the DOS PRINT.COM spooler utility. [PRTDS2] PRTDS2 is a utility for use with DOS's print spooler. It will display the print queue and let you add or delete a line. [SPOOL20] Spool20 ($0) is a print spooler. [SPOOL] Spool (Newbro, Jeff; $20) is a multi-function print spooler which can perform many sophisticated print functions. It permits buffer sizes up to the maximum available RAM, printer redirection, single-shot use, and many other options. [V_SPOOL] Versa-Spool (Newbro, Jeff; $20) is a print spooler which permits up to three printers to be independently spooled as background processes. -----Print-To-Disk [DISKPR] DiskPr lets you print to a disk file. [LPT2DSK] LPT2Dsk (Bouche, George G.; $?) lets you print to a disk file. [LPTX301] LPTX lets you print to a disk file. [PRINDIR] Prindir 9.0 (Hotz, Michael A.; $20) is a 1k TSR printer redirection utility that allows you to easily select the destination for printer output, or specify which printer to intercept and allow other printers to run untouched. You can direct printer output to the screen or to a file with a keypress. There's support for expanded and extended memory, and a separate utility for locating unused areas of memory above 640k. An indicator, toggled with the scroll lock key, is displayed in the corner of the screen to remind you when printer output is redirected. PsL gives PrinDir top rating for a general print redirection utility. [VPR_DW] VPrint (Whitman, David; $?) lets you print to a disk file. -----Printer Control [ADAMAS] Adamas 0.3 (Sawada, Dr. Masaaki; $10-$20) is a resident utility that intercepts output to your printer and lets you add printing features which your word processor normally does not support. res:7k [ASPRN] Asprn (Hummel, Robert L.; $0) lets you easily change print styles and control other printer functions from within the text file that you are printing. Asprn monitors output going to the printer looking for user specified macros. When it recognizes one, it substitutes a predefined set of printer control codes. This should work with any printer. res:1k [BUTO] Back Up, Tear Off is a batch file that moves the paper in a printer up so that you can off the paper at the perforation. Then at a tap of any key, it makes the paper go back to where it was. BUTO works on the IBM Proprinter and the Panasonic Kx-p1092-i printers, although it could be patched for any printer that will do reverse linefeeds. [CTRLPJB] Ctrl-P (Byers, Jeff L.; $0) toggles screen echo to printer on and off. This means that text that appears on the screen in DOS will be printed as well. [CTRL_P] CTRL-P (Graham, Keith P.; $0) lets you toggle the printer off and on from a batch file. [CPORT] CPort (Graham, Keith P.; $0) is a universal printer/com port controller. Like MODE with more options and menus. [EZSET] EZSet 2.1 (McAdams Associates, reg. fee: $20) allows you to access all of your parallel printer features, including those that are not directly available from the printer control panel. You can send printer control codes from the command line or from inside batch files. [FORMFEED] FormFeed sends a formfeed to the printer. [LRNFRM] Learn-A-Form 2.2 (Software Hut; $50) makes it easy to print data into preprinted forms. You insert the form in your dot matrix printer and move the print head around with the cursor keys to "teach" the program the location of fields for data to be printed in. Alternatively, you can give the location of fields with X and Y (ie: horizontal and vertical) coordinates by placing a template over the form. After teaching the program the layout of the form, Leran-A-Form will print data from a file you have created onto the preprinted form. You could accomplish the same thing with a word processor by preparing a blank file with dashes where data should go, but Learn-A-Form is a faster and easier way to do the job. [LPTSWAP] LPT-Swap 2.0 (Robert F. Keber Jr., reg. fee: $0) allows you to switch between two printer ports. [LQ] LQ (Harris, Mark ASP; $?) is a printer font program that will work with most printers by means of a configuration file. (It comes preconfigured for Epson and compatible printers.) Among the many features of LQ are a pop-up window for controlling print at any time; a print spooler especially designed to handle the graphics output used by LQ to create the fonts; a graphics editor for creating high-resolution letterheads; a poster-printing program; support for proportional spacing and micro-justification with PC-Write. Numerous character sets (fonts) come on the disk. Configuration files are on the disk for five different printers, but if yours is not one of those, you can set up your own configuration file. [MAPLPT] MapLPT (Swayne, Patrick; $15) maps parallel printer output to a serial port. It surpasses the MODE command in that it supports baud rates to 38,400 and it supports all forms of handshaking likely to be required by a printer. [NEWPS] NewPS 2.1 (Jelenc, Pierre; $0) is a TSR that will send a formfeed to the printer when you press the right Shift key with the PrtSc key and do a regular screen dump, but to LPT2, when you press the left Shift key with PrtSc. It does not affect a PrtSc done without pressing a Shift key. [PDSWAP] PDSwap (Cash, Ted E.; $5) can be popped up at any time to swap between two monitors; monochrome and color and swap between two printers; LPT1: and LPT2:. [POPTYPE] PopType 1.0 (Ford, Nelson ASP; $0) is a 10k pop-up utility that can be used to send text to a printer or to the end of a text file a line at a time. Control codes assigned to function keys can be used to set the printer. Control codes are user definable. PopType can be used to address an envelope, print labels of any size, or even to type a letter - all without leaving the program you are in. In the file mode, you can add notes to the end of a file, allowing you to keep a running log or to easily make notes while you test or use another program. [PFEED2] Printer Feeder (Pakin, Scott; $0) lets you send a form feed to the printer by pressing Alt-Shift-F, a line feed with Alt-Shift-L, or re-initialize the printer with Alt-Shift-I. res:1k [PRNPLS] PrintPlus 6.9 (Klein, Lambert ASP; $19) is a full-featured file printing utility. Features include file viewing, tag and copy, move, delete, and redirection of output to an ASCII file. It also features pull-down menus and optional mouse support. It can print files from specified page numbers, print line numbers, preview the number of pages to print, and replace IBM box characters with user defined characters. [PRINTER] Printer is a set-up program that works for any printer. [PRNCOM] Print Commander 3.0 (Sorcerer Software, reg. fee: $15) is a 4k printer control TSR. [PRNSET] PrnSet and Friends 2.45 (Wisan, Richard; $0) is a (non-resident) printer control program designed to work with any printer by reading the control codes out of a data file. You must be able to figure out the control codes from your printer's manual and put them into the data file. Output can be sent to a file instead of a printer. Several related utilities are included: Prn2Both divides a paged file for printing on both sides of the paper (print odd pages, turn over, and print even pages on the back). It can make proper margins and reverse headers and footers if nesessary. Unlike similar programs in the PSL, this one can handle doc files which do underlining, etc, by inserting into the file backspace characters or carriage returns without linefeeds. Mangler does minor surgery: inserts FF's, add/strip margin, strips terminal blanks, breaks files into parts, strips high-bits, removes headers, Un-paginates, reverses order of pages, and swaps frontsy-backsy around CR's. CountPgs gets information about a file, including: number, length, and width of pages; and the presence of Left Margin, FF's, tabs, bare CR's, high-bit (usually graphics) characters, misplaced ^Z's, and oversize pages. Pagina breaks an unpaged file into pages, with or without headers, footers, and margins. You get a wide variety of choices about the headers and footers. A string for headers and footers can be entered at runtime. Page numbers can start with any number and multiple files can be printed at once with continuous page numbers. [PRNT] Prnt (Sawada, Dr. Masaaki; $10-$20) is a pop up program that enhances the ability of the PRINT.COM included with DOS by allowing you to send files to your printer while running another program. PRNT can also send printer codes/line-text to your printer. [PRSELCT] PRSelect (Dexter, James; $?) is a memory resident utility that lets you change between LPT1 and LPT2 without leaving the program you are in. [SETPRN] SetPrn used in DOS like BASIC's LPRINT command. [SWPTR] SwPtr swaps LPT1: and LPT2: without unplugging cables. [TYPER] Typer (Woodruff, Jim; $0) is an electronic typewriter simulator that lets you type a line at a time to your printer. QB source code is included. [VPS] VPS is an attempt to provide a generic printer setup utility that may be configured for any printer that uses escape sequences to control the printer. VPS allows you to define the printer escape sequences that you want to use and can be tailored for your specific printer and needs. If you have more than one printer, you can create setup definitions for each printer and use VPS as needed to configure each printer based upon the printer definition you choose. [ZAPCODE] ZapCode 3.4 (Morton, Robert L. ASP; $23) is a printer control utility for all types of printers including dot-matrix, ink-jet, laser, and even plotters. It can be used as a 17k-27k pop-up, allowing it to be used from within any word processor or other types of programs. Drivers are included for most types of printers or you can create your own. It supports LPT1-3 and COM1-4. [ZPRT] ZPRT 1.0a (Unique Software ASP; $0) will support any of your printer functions, and you get to decide which ones. Zprt supports up to 91 different printer functions of up to 14 individual codes each. Because you enter the control codes, Zprt will work with any printer. -----Other [BUSCARDS] Buscards 3.2 (David R. Long, reg. fee: $35) will print business cards on an Epson or IBM dot-matrix printer. Buscards give you a choice of borders, styles and allows you to control the output to your printer. [CHKOUT] Check-It-Out 2.30 (Hess, Ronald E.; $5) checks document files for the presence of upper ASCII characters (such as line-drawing characters) before you waste time printing them on a printer that will not print such characters. Check-It-Out is very fast, and if you find upper ASCII characters, you can use a utility such as Over127 to convert those characters to alternatives while printing. [COUNTPG] CountPgs 3.51a (Wisan, Richard N.; $0) scans a file that you want to print and tells you how many pages it will take to print and the length of the longest line in the file (or on each page) with an option to specify tab width. You are warned if a file ends with or without a formfeed, has too many lines between formfeeds, or begins with a formfeed, so that you can make changes before printing the file. [ENVLCCC] Envelope (Caleb Computer Consultants; $5) will create address labels for you, asking for confirmation before printing, or printing them all. It will address envelopes with the first records being the return address or asking you for the return address. Pascal source code is included. [INT17] INT17 (Gavin, Bruce; $10) disables printer output. Programs will still think they are printing, even though they are not. This is useful if you don't want printer output for any reason - not even redirected to the screen or disk (as other utilities in PsL will allow). Printer output can be re-enabled from the DOS command line. [MLPS] MLPS will send a formfeed to your printer when you press Shift-PrtSc. Just put MLPS in your AUTOEXEC file and it's always handy. [OVER127] Over127 1.0 (Sawada, Dr. Masaaki; $5-$10) traps upper-ASCII characters headed for the printer and substitutes lower-ASCII characters. This allows printers that do not support the upper-ASCII characters to print reasonable alternatives instead. For example, "+" could be substituted for ASCII-206. (For purists, characters with codes above 127 are not "ASCII" and are properly referred to as the "IBM Extended Character Set," but "upper-ASCII" is so much easier...) res:5k [P2V] P2V 1.00 (Graham, Keith P.; $0) redirects printer output to the screen. [PINT] Print Interceptor 1.3 (Meyer, Eric; $0) is a memory resident program that translates printer output according to a table that can be changed at will. This can be used on printers that don't support foreign characters or line-drawing characters to emulate those characters, for example. res:8k [PREVIEW] PreView (Szakacs, Kurt; $0) reads a text file and shows you roughly on the screen how it will look when printed out. It does not show you the actual text. Instead, it displays a graphics pixel in place of a digit or letter. This lets you see the layout for nine pages of text on one screen, and the program is FAST! [PSPLUS] Print-Screen Plus 1.0 (Terry Dauplaise, reg. fee: $15) is a TSR which does a formfeed after a print-screen is done from the keyboard. [PSFF] PSFF is a command to force a formfeed after a screen print. You must use the right shift plus print keys, simultaneously to work. If you use the left shift key, the printer will not go to the top of the next sheet. [STRIPHI] Striphi 1.0 (Carter, Bryan; $0) replaces characters in a file with asterisks when those characters are from the upper half of the IBM extended character set, such as are line drawing characters, for example. This makes the file easier to print. C source code included. [WAIT_PA] Wait (Anderson, Pat; $0) is for use when printing onto single-sheet paper on a dot-matrix (or old daisy wheel) printer. WAIT hides in the background until you are printing a document that has a formfeed in it. Then WAIT will pop up and pause the printing while you change paper. The advantage of WAIT over PAGEBRK is that WAIT, being resident in memory, should work from within other programs. The disadvantage is that if a file printer moves to the top of the next page by a series of blank lines rather than an ASCII-12 formfeed character or if the file is a continuous series of lines of text, then WAIT will not work. res:1k -----Screen Printing [SCNDPHS] ScrnDump 1.11 (Hardwood Software Associates; $0) lets you print graphics screens from the following monitors: EGA (640x350 color), CGA (640x200 b&w), or Hercules (720x348 b&w). Printers supported are Epson/IBM, Citoh, Okidata 92 and 192. [VGAPRNT] VGAPrint (Gozum, Lawrence and Gozum, Marvin; $15-$20) is a printer utility for printing any viewable VGA 320x200x256 color picture on an Epson or IBM-compatible dot matrix printer in seven shades of gray.