Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!gatech!prism!bb16
From: bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Bostater)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Just for kicks
Message-ID: <29446@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 20 May 91 14:14:23 GMT
References: <4cBo0AK00Vpg06BUV4@andrew.cmu.edu>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 80

In article <4cBo0AK00Vpg06BUV4@andrew.cmu.edu> mg2n+@andrew.cmu.edu (Martin G. Greenberg) writes:
>Has anyone else seen/experienced this problem?
>
>I wrote a program (for commercial reasons) which needs to download
>soft fonts to a laser printer which is attached to the computer. To
>do this I did the sensible thing and used the following sequence of
>commands along with a WRITELN or two to send the appropriate control
>codes.

I've written a similar routine for work myself.  Why are you using WRITELN?
Are you sure you want the extra CR+LF sent to the printer?  PCL in general
will normally ignore those characters so at best you're doing no harm, at worst
you're corrupting the data.

>
>    SwapVectors;
>    Exec (GetEnv ('COMSPEC'), '/C COPY FONT1.FOO PRN > NUL')
>    SwapVectors;

Off the top of my head try:
    
     Exec( GetnEnv('COMSPEC'), '/C copy/b font1.foo prn > nul');

This makes sure that ^Z's don't mess up the copy command. (Or are you sure that
font1.foo doesn't have a $1a in it anywhere? :-)

The approach that I took differs signifigantly.  I read the data in and sent it
to the printer directly because I had to send over a 19200 baud serial line.
I later re-wrote the program to go over a parallel line.  This method gives
you more control over what gets sent.

Program LJ_Example;
uses printer;

const
  ESC = #27;

...
Procedure DownloadFont( FontID: Integer;
                        FontFile: String);
var
  F: File of Char;
  c: Char;

Begin
  Assign( f, FontFile);
  Reset(f);

  Write(lst, ESC+"*c", FontID, "D");  { tell printer data is a downloadable
                                        softfont }
  While Not Eof(f) do
   Begin
    read(f,c);
    write(lst,c);
   End; { While }

  Close(f);
End; { Procedure DownloadFont }
...


[stuff deleted]

>We finally got ticked off and sent the whole shebang off to Hewlett Packard
>(the software is designed for the LaserJet 2 since that is what our market
>uses almost exclusively) and said "any ideas?". The tech at HP tried the
>code on the machines in the office and it failed miserably, yet when she
>tried it on her machine at home, it worked flawlessly. HP at this point said,
>"It's Borland's fault" (the code was written using TP 5.0 & 5.5).

Sounds like a DOS bug to me.  If you're using the EXEC command to call the copy
command.  Is there any correlation between DOS versions and/or IBM-DOS vs
MS-DOS?  It sounds to me like sometimes the ^Z's are causing problems and 
sometimes they aren't  (at least off the top of my head :-)

-- 
Scott Bostater      Georgia Tech Research Institute - Radar Systems Analysis
"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him"  -Ps 62.1
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