[Coco] DriveWire printing options

[Bob Devries]

Hi Aaron.

If I'm understanding you correctly, then the initial output from drivewire 
will be a RAW dump of the data from the port (whether bitbanger or (if 
supported) parallel port).

Then any tool can be used (if necessary) to convert the RAW to either a 
picture file or a text file, or for that matter a MIDI file if the output is 
from Ultimuse.

Do you envisage support for Ultimuse, which also uses the bitbanger port, 
albeit at a different bit rate?

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: Sunday, December 27, 2009 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] DriveWire printing options


> The tool I'm creating will take bytes captured from the bitbanger (or
> anything else that can generate the bytes usually sent to a printer)
> and output an image: png, gif, jpg, tiff etc.  Probably PNG, it seems
> to make the nicest output so far.
>
> You can easily put these images into a PDF or any other format if
> you'd like, but that won't be part of the tool.  Plenty of ways to do
> that kind of thing already.  If you want to work with the text, well
> you probably wouldn't want to use this tool at all since the text will
> already be in the file you would feed to this tool.  Maybe we can make
> a simple filter to strip out any printer control codes, but it would
> be simpler to configure your application not to put them in there in
> the first place, if possible.
>
> I've attached a sample of the output from the tool I'm creating.  Its
> still pretty limited but can do several dot pitches and "NLQ" mode.
> Finishing up text/font controls won't take long, and graphics are
> pretty simple too.  Probably have something that pretty much works by
> the end of tomorrow.
>
> If you're nostalgic for dot matrix printouts, enjoy the sample :)
> There is an awful lot of tweaking you can do on the output when it's
> not real ink.  Dot size and shape, darkness, etc are easy to play
> with.  I've got it looking pretty authentic (i think, it's been a
> while since I looked at a 9 pin dot matrix printout) but for some uses
> it might be nice to tweak it to look better/more readable, in fact
> getting output better than such a printer could actually create is
> certainly possible.
>
> -Aaron
>
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Frank Swygert <farna at att.net> wrote:
>> I suggest PDF file output for portability, and that will handle graphics 
>> as
>> well as text. If someone needs an editable text file all they have to do 
>> is
>> open the file in a PDF reader and copy the text then paste into any 
>> editor
>> they'd like as a text file.
>>
>> What you really need to do is look at the possible scenarios and decide
>> which is easiest to incorporate. If someone intends to use this for
>> something other than programming they will want graphics output too, so a
>> plain text print wouldn't work for them. Because PC printers are stupid 
>> and
>> need the CPU to do most of the work, you may be limited to something like
>> text output. That is better than nothing!
>> --
>> Frank Swygert
>> Publisher, "American Motors Cars" Magazine (AMC)
>> For all AMC enthusiasts
>> http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
>> (free download available!)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>


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