dot matrix printer doesn't work right

[The Fat Dad]

I'm a Windows XP and VS.net newbie, so be gentle. I like my listings on
fanfold paper for debugging, so I bought an Oki ML391turbo dot matrix
printer. I hooked it up and everything works great except that when I print
out listings from within VS, it sends out printer formatting commands that
are incompatible with the printer. They override the internal setup of the
printer. I know that I have the printer set up right through the front
panel and that I have the right driver loaded and I'm running the right
emulation for the printer. Actually, it may not be VS, but Windows itself,
since the same
thing happens when I go to the Printers and Faxes screen and print a test
page to the printer. There may be some sort of default formatting coming
from Windows. In any event, unless I can find a way to make these tools
act right with my printer, then I've wasted several hundred dollars. This
would be, in my opinion, a serious flaw in a tool as sophisticated as
Windows or VS. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Richard Urban]

An aside. What is VS.net? I searched in Google and got absolutely NOTHING!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[FrankV]

I never could get a dot-matrix printer working since I started with XP
(about 3 1/2 years ago). I even talked to a technician from Hewlett Packard
(the printer) who told me what was going wrong. HP technicians understand
technical problems, not like those reading from a book like MS
"technicians". He gave me a few suggestions in getting around this XP
problem but nothing worked. I finally gave up on it.

Frank

 

[V Green]

Richard!!!

I am AGHAST!!!

Visual Studio.

;-)

An aside. What is VS.net? I searched in Google and got absolutely NOTHING!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[The Fat Dad]

By VS.net I meant Visual Studio dot net, or Visual Studio 2003

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Frank

You are missing your vocation.. you should be a comedian..

Your words.. unabridged

HP technicians understand technical problems, not like those reading from a
book like MS "technicians". He gave me a few suggestions in getting around
this XP problem but nothing worked.

OK.. lets try this again, but miss out the snipe at MS technicians..

Your words again, but the snipe edited in parentheses..

HP technicians understand technical problems, (not like those reading from a
book like MS "technicians"). He gave me a few suggestions in getting around
this XP problem but nothing worked.

I assume that 'He' was an HP technician that understands problems unlike the
MS Technicians that you consider to only read from books..

It seems to me that the guys who 'really' know don't know as much as they
should to be able to stay ahead of those that think they know because they
read books..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[Richard Urban]

(-:

Type VS.net in Google and you get - NOTHING!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Richard Urban]

Guess the HP guy really DIDN'T understand after all (-:

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Richard

It certainly looks that way.. if I was to look hard enough, I may come up
with a few books for the HP guy.. do you have any spare?..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[The Fat Dad]

This whole exchange has been highly entertaining...wish it had something to
do with getting my dot matrix printer working with XP and VS.net.

 

[V Green]

This whole exchange has been highly entertaining...wish it had something to
do with getting my dot matrix printer working with XP and VS.net.

I would imagine that you're using this with a parallel port?

If so, try changing port types (ECC,STD,ECP) in the BIOS
and see if that makes a difference.

XP may bitch on reboot and require a reinstall of the port
when you do this...

 

[HeyBub]

(-:

Type VS.net in Google and you get - NOTHING!

You often don't get a lot when you type IN vs.net.

 

[HeyBub]

I'm a Windows XP and VS.net newbie, so be gentle. I like my listings
on fanfold paper for debugging, so I bought an Oki ML391turbo dot
matrix printer. I hooked it up and everything works great except
that when I print out listings from within VS, it sends out printer
formatting commands that are incompatible with the printer. They
override the internal setup of the printer. I know that I have the
printer set up right through the front panel and that I have the
right driver loaded and I'm running the right emulation for the
printer. Actually, it may not be VS, but Windows itself, since the
same thing happens when I go to the Printers and Faxes screen and print a
test page to the printer. There may be some sort of default
formatting coming from Windows. In any event, unless I can find a
way to make these tools act right with my printer, then I've wasted
several hundred dollars. This would be, in my opinion, a serious
flaw in a tool as sophisticated as Windows or VS. Any help would be
appreciated. Thanks!

If you're doing everything from the printer's console, the printer driver
you want is "Generic / Text only," not HP anything.

 

[The Fat Dad]

Tried it. The printer prints out the first 4 lines of the listing and then
nothing else. The data coming from VS is not just ASCII text.

 

[The Fat Dad]

This message is for anyone at Microsoft that might be
reading:

I've pretty much figured out what the problem is with my printer is.
Windows overrides the front
panel setup of the printer and, using True Type fonts, is sending bitmap
printing information to the
printer. The printer can handle this, but Windows is doing a bad job of it.
The spacing is wrong,
both horizontally and vertically. This is true of the Okidata emulation,
the Epson emulation, and the
IBM ProPrinter emulation. Since these are older printers, I find it very
hard to believe that anyone
at Microsoft will do anything about these poor emulations and so I believe
that Microsoft HAS
abandoned them. The obvious solution for me is to use the generic/text only
printer driver and let
the printer use its own character set and spacing. I've tried this.
Unfortunately, there seems to be
a bug in Visual Studio so that, when you select this printer, VS sends the
first 3 or 4 lines of the
listing and then nothing more. I've tried this on several different files
in VS and the same thing
always happens. Once again, since almost nobody uses the generic printer, I
doubt that
anyone will care about fixing this or helping me find a workaround. I don't
even know who to ask.
Microsoft is not very accessable at times like this. As far as I can tell,
I'm just stuck!

 

[FrankV]

I don't know if it will help but try this. In Printer and Faxes, right click
on specific printer, properties then advanced. Then click Print Processor
and look at RAW which controls printer specs. Try experimenting with this
and you may find a solution.

Frank

 

[LoneSome]

As far as I've experimented, using either VB5 or even MS-Word, Microsoft has
been doing a very lousy job about dot-matrix printer... Just try to use
full-width of a large dot-matrix printer on Win2000 Pro or WinXP Pro. Good
Luck, because you will need it!

However, WinXP Home did a less lousier job than Win2000 Pro and WinXP Pro,
since generic text/only printer driver can print on large carriage printers,
but the metrics on line height have been hallucinated by some
MS-programmer...

Sample program :

.....
For I = 1 to 50
Printer.Print I,Printer.CurrentY
Next I
Printer.EndDoc
......


Sample output :

1 0
2 0.1381944
3 0.2763889
4 0.4152778
5 0.5534722
6 0.6916667

and so on...

Can someone explain me why a generic text/only printer gives such results,
since these kind of drivers are mainly used on dot-matrix printer, and,
moreover, the selected font is "Device Font 10cpi", which shows well that it
was intended for these printers?

I can't, but I hope somebody could