TEXTorPS

(C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1992, 1993, 1994 Version 2.56 Minor fixes and requested features. Major revision at version 2.51, please read. Please be sure to install the updated textorps.hlp file. TEXTorPS is an application program that can enhance the usability of OS/2 PostScript printers by permitting the user to leave the printer in PostScript mode and still print text sent to the printer spooler by applications which are not PostScript aware. When TEXTorPS is running, PostScript printer jobs are undisturbed, but other text files are modified by the insertion of a PostScript program to interpret the job as ASCII text. The user may specify the font, typesize, line spacing, margins, orientation, page numbers and strings on each page. The ASCII text mode which is supported is not the full PPDS datastream mode, and does not support graphics, control characters other than CR/LF, FF, TAB, SI , SO, DC2, DC4, esc-E, esc-F, and esc-:. An attempt is made to print unsupported characters as blanks and ignore unsupported esc sequences, but esc sequences containing the character ctrl-D (hex 04) will cause the printout to fail. Support of SI,SO is not identical to PPDS mode but may be acceptable. The single and double rule characters are replaced by single rules and corners by blanks. The National Language Characters of codepage 850 are available as an option. Starting TEXTorPS TEXTorPS monitors a selected printer queue. The default queue monitored is the "default printer" queue. If you want to use 2 or more parameter sets (formats), you can specify parameter set 3, for example, with the parameter /p:3 as in TEXTORPS /p:3 Installing TEXTorPS Normally you want to install TEXTorPS by unziping TXT2PS.ZIP to a temporary directory and then using the install program TINSTALL by double clicking on the TINSTALL.EXE icon. Unzip TXT2PS.ZIP using the command PKUNZIP TXT2PS.ZIP. Program parameters should be blank for a typical installation. After installation, the TEXTorPS program icon will be on the desktop. If you want automatic startup you might want to shadow it to the startup folder. You may want to drag the icon to a folder. The help information should work as set up. If you have problems with it, you may need to place set HELP = c:\path in config.sys, where 'path' contains the directory in which TEXTORPS.HLP is installed, or copy TEXTORPS.HLP to C:\OS2\HELP. If you want to install TEXTorPS for a printer on a LAN using NET USE LPT3 \\server\queue (for example) you need to also define a printer on an unused parallel port (say LPT2), (drag from the printer template in OS/2 2.0 and select PostScript driver), set that printer to be the default printer, and/or select the printer from the Monitored Queue listbox under Option Queue of TEXTorPS, and set the NET USE Port listbox to LPT3. If the default printer is changed, TEXTorPS will not recognize that change unless it is restarted. If you are not using a NET USE command, leave the NET USE Port listbox set to "NO NET USE". That would be the case if you are using TCPIP command LPRMON to redirect LPT2 to a lan printer. If you are using LPRMON, use the option -b (no banner) and set up the driver as a generic PostScript printer. Files dragged to the printer icon may be selected to be "printer specific" to obtain the TEXTorPS formatting. The default system conversion to text is obtained by selecting "plain text" for the printer file contents. More information is available through the Help Menu For help about any control on any window, select the control and press F1. Use the tab key to move to controls without activating them. Be sure that a PostScript driver has been installed and connected to the queue you will be using. The correct driver name will probably start with PSCRIPT. The PM SPOOLER must not have been disabled for this program to work. Start the program with the command syntax above; select margins if desired, minimize the window. Software required: OS/2 2.1 or later with installed PSCRIPT driver Hardware required: (almost) any PostScript printer. Brief comments on options and dialog boxes: Margins - On this screen you can select the paper size and text margins, also the paper orientation. The paper. length should always be larger than the width. The margins are the distances from the respective edges of the paper for the body of printed text. When in landscape mode (sideways printing), the top margin is the distance between the long side of the paper and the top line of text (top, right etc. follow the printing, not the paper). Note for landscape mode it is NOT necessary to try to place the printer in landscape mode. On the other hand, the paper size settings are not sent to the printer- they are just used to decide where to print. You should set the printer paper size by hand when changing sizes. Font - On this screen you can select the typeface and size for text printing. The typefaces shown are for the IBM4019 and the PostScript FontCard. The program does not check that a fontcard is installed, invalid fonts may result in Courier being used as default or in no output if a software error results from a sufficiently invalid name. The options Oblique/Italic and Bold are not applicable to all fonts - see the names below. Symbol, for example, has no Italic form. Italic will be ignored in that case and no error message produced. Similarly Helvetica Light will ignore the Bold option. Type size is set by clicking on the desired number. Click on the scrollbar arrows to see more values. The accepted range is 5 pts to 72 pts (72 pts= 1 inch or 25.4 mm). Courier and its variants are the only non proportional fonts and should be used if column alignment is critical. Pagination- On this screen you can specify one or two strings to be printed in the upper or lower margins of each page, and an optional page number. The strings S1 and S2 are edit boxes accepting a maximum of 32 characters. Group boxes allow selection of what is printed at each of 4 places on the page: TC: O S1 place String S1 at top center O S2 place String S2 at top center O N place page number at top center O place nothing at top center. TR: top right. BC: bottom center BR: bottom right. The type size box on this screen applies to all of these items which are printed inside the left and right margins and outside the top and bottom margins. The centered strings are centered between the margins, not on the paper. Note that if you want vary large page numbers, for example, it may be necessary to increase the top or bottom margin size. The Save button on this screen is equivalent to the Save Defaults submenu choice: it saves ALL options for future default use. Save Defaults- Selecting this option will cause all settings: Font, margins, paper orientation, page number instructions, etc (but not the printer device name ) to be saved in the user.ini system file. About 30 variables are saved. The first time this is done, considerable disk activity is required as keys are added to the system file. The application keyname is "TEXTORPS". Once this has been done, at all future loads of the program the default values will be reloaded. Online Help See the online Extended Help and Help Index for additional information. Press F1 after tabbing to any option for more information specfic to that option.