[Coco] Printing from DW

[Aaron Wolfe]

Firstly, printing in DriveWire is mostly an OS9 feature.  It is not
impossible to print over DW from basic or a machine language program, but
you'd need to implement the client side yourself.  That might mean it's
useless for Nick since I think he doesn't use OS9, but I'll answer the
questions in case it helps someone else.

By default, anything printed to /p with a standard DriveWire OS9 disk will
cause a text file to be created in the directory "cocoprints" relative to
where you are running DW.  This can be changed to any directory you like by
setting the OutputDir value for the current printer to the path you would
prefer.
To set config variables, you can either edit the config.xml file, or you
can use a dw command in OS9 or the dw command area in the DW GUI client.
The command in this case would be:

dw config set Printer(1).OutputDir /what/ever/you/would/like

assuming you have a default config where the text printer definition comes
second in the config file.  To change the output directory for the FX80
printer you would use:

dw config set Printer(0).OutputDir /what/ever/you/would/like

because it comes first in the default config.xml and things are zero based.
 if you added some additional printers or changed the order of their
definitions, you'd use Printer(X) where X is that printer's place in the
list of printers in the config file.

If you're editing the config.xml file with a text editor, you just change
this:

<OutputDir>cocoprints</OutputDir>

to this:

<OutputDir> /what/ever/you/would/like</OutputDir>

in the printer definition you would like to change.

If you'd prefer to set the absolute file name of the output, you can set
OutputFile instead of OutputDir (if a value exists for OutputFile,
OutputDir is ignored).  Same rules apply.  The path specified will be
overwritten each time the printer is flushed (in OS9, this just means /p is
closed, which happens at the end of any print operation in OS9 to my
knowledge).

You can also specify a value for "FlushCommand".  This will be executed by
the DW process after each flush and is one way to cause any printer output
to be actually printed on paper instead of just creating a file on your DW
server.  Two special patterns will be substituted in this command.  The
string $file will be replaced with the absolute path of the file containing
the output, and $name will be substituted with the name of the print queue
(the value of Printer.Driver(X) and also CurrentPrinter at the time the job
was printed, aka what "dw config sh CurrentPrinter" returns).

HTH




On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 9:35 PM, Nick Marentes <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au>
wrote:

> Firstly... I've tried looking at the drivewire settings and the WIKI but
> cannot see/understand how I'm suppose to print via drivewire.
>
> I have a standard CoCo3 connected to my PC drivewire server. Everything is
> working fine as far as file transfering goes.
>
> Printing is set to TEXT but where does the printout go?
>
> Where do I tell drivewire what my printer serial rate is?
>
> My idea of how printing is meant to work is that I merely print from the
> CoCo and drivewire intercepts the serial data and writes a text file or
> creates an image to a location of my choosing.
>
> Ideally, it would be nice if it translated the printer data into whatever
> printer is attached to the PC and it print directly. Nice and user friendly.
>
> Am I viewing the world in rose colored glasses?
>
> Tell me if  I'm being stupid and acting like a C64 user.
>
> Nick
>
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