[Coco] DriveWire printing options

[Bob Devries]

Aaron,

I guess you could just choose one which was common, and emulate that. 
Something like the Tandy DMP133 for instance. I'd guess that most 
applications would provide support for that. Others may have 
different/better suggestions.

I personally used a Tandy DMP202 for many years. That was a 24 pin dot 
matrix printer.

Regards, Bob Devries

--
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's 
native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

Edsger W.Dijkstra, 18 June 1975

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Friday, December 25, 2009 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] DriveWire printing options


On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Bob Devries <devries.bob at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aaron, you asked:
>
>> Is there one printer model that would cover a majority of applications?
>
> Sadly, even the Tandy printers used different codes for their various
> printing modes. I wonder if the graphics printing could be implemented as 
> a
> separate module, which can be replaced with the correct type for the 
> printer
> in use, along the lines of a DLL?
>

Java is able to do dynamic class loading, but that might be pushing
the limits of where we want to go in terms of complexity.   It is a
possibility.

For simple things like bold, italics, font selection, basically text
manipulation I think a simple translation table would do (byte pattern
X = bold, byte pattern Y = doublestrike, etc).   I'll need to
understand more about how graphics are done before I can guess what
would be required there.

Maybe a better place to start would be what applications are most
important to support?  If there is a printer with good functionality
that is shared amongst the most desired apps, I could start working on
that and see where it leads.  Like I mentioned, I never got into
printing things so I don't have a good idea of what would be the most
popular printing tasks.
You mentioned printing source code.. is this just dumping ascii text
to the printer, or is there a tool you use that "pretty prints" the
code?


> Regards, Bob Devries
>
> --
> Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's
> native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
>
> Edsger W.Dijkstra, 18 June 1975
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Friday, December 25, 2009 5:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] DriveWire printing options
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 12:59 AM, Bob Devries <devries.bob at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Aaron,
>>
>> I'm sure there are some of us who still like to do development work on 
>> the
>> real thing, and often being able to list all or part of a source file is
>> useful.
>>
>> How likely is it to be able to catch the large range of Tandy printers
>> that
>> were used, and convert their output (usually in various graphics modes) 
>> to
>> a
>> raster image for printing on a Windows printer, or to a PDF or other
>> graphics file such as jpeg? If this was a possibility then various
>> programmes which produce graphics output could be used.
>>
>
> Java has good support for rendering 2D graphics, and once you have an
> image, its simple to output it to a jpeg, a PDF, send it to a local
> printer, etc. The real trick would be turning the bytes sent to the
> printer port into a 2D graphic :)
>
> Is there one printer model that would cover a majority of
> applications? I could implement things in a modular style so that
> additional bytes -> image converters could be plugged in its place
> easily enough if people wanted additional printers, but focusing on
> one to start at least would be more practical.
>
> -Aaron
>
>
>
>> Regards, Bob Devries
>> Goulburn, NSW, Australia
>>
>> --
>> Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of 
>> one's
>> native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
>>
>> Edsger W.Dijkstra, 18 June 1975
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>
>> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Sent: Friday, December 25, 2009 4:50 PM
>> Subject: [Coco] DriveWire printing options
>>
>>
>>> Hi guys,
>>>
>>> First off, Merry Christmas to everyone :)
>>>
>>> As we are finishing up a feature set for the first release of the Java
>>> based DriveWire server, I realize that I haven't put in anything for
>>> printing support yet. I don't use printers much myself, never really
>>> had much need.
>>>
>>> What (if anything) would be useful to people in the printing
>>> department? Options range from dumping the bytes to a text file, to
>>> displaying them on a web page, to even emulating some sort of Coco
>>> printer and rendering the output in a PDF, etc...
>>>
>>> Anybody still print with their Coco? If there's something that would
>>> be useful, let me know and I'll try to implement it.
>>>
>>> -Aaron
>>>
>>> --
>>> Coco mailing list
>>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>

--
Coco mailing list
Coco at maltedmedia.com
http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco