printer output

[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. 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!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You may want to post in microsoft.public.vsnet.general

 

[MGGP]

Try this:
Control Panel, Printers, right-click on your printer, go
to Properties and see what options you have. If you can
disable "Advanced Printing Properties", it might be worth
a try. You can try various options in this area but I
doubt you'll be 100% successful. That printer is a
dinosaur. Finding a compatible driver for a 15-20 year
old printer is like trying to find a water pump for a 20
year old washing machine . . .

 

[The Fat Dad]

The printer is hardly a dinosaur. Thousands are sold every year and
millions of pages of preprinted fanfold forms are run through them. To
think that Microsoft would abandon them is ridiculous, although Microsoft
has done stranger things. Still, since they have been supported in the
past, it's hard to believe that that support has just disappeared.

 

[Jim Macklin]

Try the Windows 2000 drivers, that is the newest list that I
could find.


| The printer is hardly a dinosaur. Thousands are sold
every year and
| millions of pages of preprinted fanfold forms are run
through them. To
| think that Microsoft would abandon them is ridiculous,
although Microsoft
| has done stranger things. Still, since they have been
supported in the
| past, it's hard to believe that that support has just
disappeared.
|
message
| | > Try this:
| > Control Panel, Printers, right-click on your printer, go
| > to Properties and see what options you have. If you can
| > disable "Advanced Printing Properties", it might be
worth
| > a try. You can try various options in this area but I
| > doubt you'll be 100% successful. That printer is a
| > dinosaur. Finding a compatible driver for a 15-20 year
| > old printer is like trying to find a water pump for a 20
| > year old washing machine . . .
| >
| >>-----Original Message-----
| >>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. 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!
| >>
| >>
| >>.
| >>
|
|

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Microsoft have not abandoned them.. XP has drivers already installed that
cater for the printer.. it emulates IBM or Epson dot matrix printers..

I would suggest that you refer to your manual for instruction on Front Panel
settings, specifically:

Menu Mode: Control Panel.. Summary of Menu Settings.. Explanations of Menu
Items..


--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[The Fat Dad]

Thanks, Mike, but I have my printer set up correctly. The first thing that
VS sends
in the print data is a set of ESC sequences that override the front panel
setup and put the
printer into weird spacing and font settings. These ESC sequences are not
from the
emulation used by the printer, it's just that 1 or 2 of them happen to be
recognized by
the printer enough to foul things up. I can find no way to stop these
sequences or modify
them. I don't understand why they are being sent. There must be some way
to control
them, because they override anything I can do in the front panel setup of my
printer. It is
very frustrating! Can you give me any more help along these lines?
Thanks.

 

[The Fat Dad]

This message is for Mike Hall (MS-MVP) and 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!