JetDrive 1.40 (c) 1991/93 by Peter Kienle & B'Brox Productions This program and its support files are free to be copied and used. Distribution MUST contained all files in this folder. All rights to the code are with: Peter Kienle & Monika Herzig 1502 S. Olive Street Bloomington, IN 47401 (812) 334 3022 GEnie:M.HERZIG Even if we use this program on our own machines extensively, we cannot be made responsible for any damage resulting from its use! General Description =================== When I bought my HP DeskJet 500 I was ready to see some good printing results. And, in fact, it worked better than expected with all programs which had something like a DeskJet printer driver. However, my still favourite all-day wordprocessor WORDPLUS didn't have one of those. Text - yeah; bold, italics and other attributes - neah; graphics - tell me about it! It seemed to be easier (and less expensive) to come up with some sort of printer driver than to transfer all my WORDPLUS .DOC files into another format and buy a new wordprocessor. WORDPLUS is really easy to adapt to different printers because of its printer driver which uses the PRINTER.CFG configuration file. The DeskJet manual and some testing finally helped me to print out text with different attributes such as bold, italics etc. It didn't take me too long, though, to realize that graphics and the combination of text attributes needed more than a new PRINTER.CFG. The problem with the graphics is that dot matrix printers expect their graphic data in a totally different format than any of the 'Jets'. If you don't have the EPSON Emulation Cartridge for the DeskJet your printer will not be able to understand matrix graphics and therefore print a lot of garbage. Also, most text attributes are set in a different way on the DeskJet than on a matrix printer. I couldn't find an easy way to have the printer driver print combined attributes such as bold+italics. That's what JetDrive.ACC is here for. It is sitting right there in the memory of your ST after it has been booted and is waiting. It's waiting until your ST wants to send something to the printer using the BCONOUT BIOS function: this data is collected in JetDrive's own buffer. Here is a chance to catch the graphic data and the attribute stuff and translate it into DeskJet compatible data. This is done in two steps: 1) Our very own PRINTER.CFG, custom made for JetDrive.ACC, contains 'hooks' for all the stuff that needs to be translated. 2) JetDrive.ACC intercepts all BIOS printer data and stores them into its own buffer. As soon as it recognizes a 'hook' it starts translating. This is why you can't use this PRINTER.CFG with any other printer or other program than WORDPLUS. There's also no way to make JetDrive.ACC work together with WORDPLUS without the special PRINTER.CFG. From JetDrive's buffer the altered printer data is picked up using an evnt_timer call and sent to the printer, or a disk file. Installing JetDrive ------------------- In order to use JetDrive, carry out these two steps: 1) Copy the file JetDrive.ACC into the root directory of your boot disk or boot partition of your harddrive. (To get at the root directory of a drive or partition just double click (or OPEN) the respective drive letter from the desktop. That's it! Usually there will already be an assortment of desk ACCessories) Important note about installing: If you use 'MULTIDESK' or something the like make sure that JetDrive is kept resident! 2) Copy the file PRINTER.CFG into the same folder or path from where you usually start WORDPLUS.PRG. WORDPLUS will load any 'valid' printer driver from the same directory which is named PRINTER.CFG when it starts up. WORDPLUS will not accept any invalid printer driver (even if the name IS PRINTER.CFG). If you don't want to lose your old PRINTER.CFG rename it, you can still load it into WORDPLUS later on if you need it. In order to work correctly the HP Desk Jet driver must be installed! You know that the correct driver is installed if the driver installation line in WORDPLUS just above the character table reads: 'HP DeskJet'. Working with JetDrive ===================== If you followed the installation part correctly JetDrive.ACC should be present the next time after you boot your WORDPLUS workdisk up. Does its name show up in the first menu slot with your other ACCessories? Now load WORDPLUS. If PRINTER.CFG was installed correctly you'll see 'HP DeskJet' in the information above the character table. That's it already. Now you are ready to print and work with WORDPLUS like you are used to. (not before reading through this manual, though!) Some notes: ---------- 1) In WORDPLUS you can mix any text and graphics in the same line. However, as soon as you print using a different graphic resolution than 75dpi the vertical spacing of text within the vertical graphics area is also affected (The space between two lines of text gets smaller because the linefeed is not done by the text but by the graphics - and the height of graphic lines depends on the resolution). This may require some experiments if you plan to label pictures with regular text or something like this. 2) You should not try to print WORDPLUS documents with a page length of more that 65 lines. This is no bad behaviour of JetDrive. The DeskJet just puts a maximum of 65 lines on one regular page (unless you use longer sheets). If you try to print more than 65 lines there will be a form feed after 65 lines and the rest will be printed on the next page. 3) Instead of sending data to the printer you can also write it into a disk file. To do this you have to open the JetDrive box and select PRINT TO DISK. This will bring up a file selector. Enter the name of the file you intend to create. If you don't enter a file extension JetDrive will append the default (.DCP). If you add an extension to the filename this will be used. 4) Graphics can be printed in four different sizes which can even be mixed in a document, if you want to go through very little extra work. 5) There may be problems when mixing text and graphics in the same vertical area. Especially if there are some blank lines of data in your image and text is in this vertical area. Usually if you insert images it will move the text out of the way (inserting linefeeds). 6) There's still no way yet, to print multiple images side by side. This results in a sort of venetian blind effect. Handling of the Acceesory ------------------------- INTERCEPT ON This toggles with the OFF button. If selected, JetDrive intercepts printer data coming from BIOS BCONOUT. OFF If this is on, (then ON is OFF...) and JetDrive doesn't intercept anything. This should be used when printing with anything else than WordPlus. BYPASS When Intercept is ON usually all printer data is passed on to the JetDrive translation subroutine. If the BYPASS button is selected the printer data passed on to JetDrive's buffer is NOT altered. The only useful purpose for that might be to intercept printer data from a program (other than WordPlus) and using JetDrive to write it to a disk file. Usually you'll want to keep this button un- selected. SPOOL PRINT TO DISK Click this button BEFORE you start printing, if you want to send your data to a disk file instead to the printer. Enter the filename and start printing after EXITing JetDrive. Note that clicking this button opens a write file and will keep it open until JetDrive receives the printer reset command (which WordPlus sends at the end of a document). You'll see an alert box and hear a bell when the file is closed. As long as the write file is open this button is not selectable. In case anything goes wrong (or you want to abort the operation) you can... CLOSE FILE This button is only available when a file has been opened earlier. SUFFIX:DCP When printing to disk the fileselector asks you for a filename. If you enter a full filename that includes a suffix, the full name will be used. However, in case you don't add a suffix JetDrive will append the suffix contained in this text field. You can edit this default suffix. GRAPHIC SIZE These four buttons control the size of the printed graphics. Note that if there are graphics on the same line with text the distance of linefeeds will depend on the selected graphics size. 300dpi 1/4 Graphics contained in your document are printed in 1/4 of it's original size. Linefeeds side by side with such an image will also only be 1/4 of their regular height. 150dpi 1/2 dito with 1/2 100dpi 1/3 dito with 1/3 75dpi 1/1 Looks like on a 9pin dot matrix printer and uses lots of ink. And linefeeds are 1/1. Individual:~ You can also use individual graphic sizes for each image. If you select this button JetDrive will interpret each occurence of the character contained in the text field as control character. In our case if JetDrive sees the '~' it will read the following THREE characters as new graphic size. Note that: a) Neither the '~' nor the THREE characters following it will be printed. b) Only use one of these sizes: 300, 150, 100, 075! c) Each '~'-sequence stays in effect until a new resolution is requested. d) Example:~150 will set all following graphics to 150dpi. e) This is rather cryptic. If the control character is NOT followed by one of the size descriptions you will get wild results. f) You can use a different control character. In fact all characters available from within Wordplus can be used. V-Align When including graphics in your files you will find that printing them in anything else but '75dpi 1/1' resolution, all text/graphics following below the image will move closer towards the top of the page. This stems from the fact that on lines with graphic data all linefeeds are done by the graphic image. And 300dpi linefeeds are just 1/4 of regular linefeeds. If V-Align is selected JetDrive tries to compensate for this by increasing the numbers of linefeeds. There will still be problems with footers and stuff so some experimenting is necessary. Save Settings Once you made changes in the JetDrive box you can save the current settings by clicking this button. The status is saved directly into the JetDrive.Acc on the boot drive. To omit any problems with that, DO NOT REMOVE the JetDrive.Acc from the boot directory while it's running! EXIT Exits the control box and takes over all buttons settings. Bloomington, March 6th, 1993