Printing landscape reports from DOS program

[nelsonhd]

Hello:

I am testing the print processor included in vDos 2021.05.01. It's working great with reports in portrait, but if I print a report that must be in landscape format, the lines of the report are cut at the right side of the pages, like being cut in half, and the information becomes incomplete. Those reports in landscape are normally printed using an Epson FX-2190 printer and for the details the reports use condensed text. The processor shrinks the text correctly.

I'm trying using the Microsoft Print to PDF driver as a benchmark to see if a report can be printed using a laser printer from vDos. If I set the PDF printer to landscape and then print, the text in the report becomes wider and has the same issues as printing in portrait.

Do you have any ideas on how to print in landscape from a DOS program in vDos? I've been using WinPrint and Printfil on some computers but I'm trying to see if I can use vDos' print processor instead where external programs are not needed, like no backgrounds from stationery, etc.

Best regards,

Nelson

[Jos]

I’m unaware of a Epson ESC code that sets the orientation of the printout.

If that is correct, I think the simplest method would be to create a copy of the print(driver). Set its default orientation to landscape and add a LPTx = SEL: "<landscape printer>” with appropriate HORZ: and VERT: settings.
Or eventually two LPTx’s, one for portrait, the other for landscape, and select landscape at the Printer Selection dialog when needed.

Jos

[nelsonhd]

I don't think multiple LPTx lines may be possible because the program, DataFlex runtime, it's set to print only using LPT1.

I'll try the HORZ: and VERT: settings later, but that may mean requiring a user to have two folders of vDos in the same computer with each of them having different config.txt files: one for portrait reports an another for landscape/wide reports (those made for an FX-2190 printer). Landscape reports are the result of taking something originally meant for portrait report (Epson LX-350), making the column names and the detail line with condensed text and then printing detail lines with more than 80 columns. Effectively there's nothing in ESC/P that makes a report print as "landscape", that it's made up by the reporting part and a wide printer like the FX-2190.

Regards,

Nelson. 

[Jos]

If you want portrait and landscape printing, but your program doesn’t allow to select a printer port, that’s a major problem.
I guess your program will neither have an option to used PCL instead of ESC codes.

You then would indeed need two separate config.txt and autoexec.txt files. Two shortcuts, though not two vDos directories, see ReadMe.pdf.

Jos

[jamesb52]

Send output to a text file instead of a printer port. Then use Windows tools to finish it off.

[Jos]

If the output contains printer control codes, then that is no real option.

Even w/o printer control codes, vDos already stores the output in two text files, ASCII and Unicode based.
Seems easier to specify once what Windows tool to handle one of those files. Certainly if you do a lot of printing.

Jos