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From: arritt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: documentation printing
Message-ID: <1991Jun11.105816.31353@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 11 Jun 91 10:58:16 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 27

Shareware and PD programs often contain a file 'printdoc.bat' or
some such, which prints out the documentation file.  I've noticed
that most of the time these work by 'copy program.doc prn' rather
than 'print program.doc'.  The problem is that copy-to-prn locks
up my system until the file is printed, whereas 'print' would 
spool so I could do other stuff while the file was printing
(this is under MS-DOS 3.3+; I don't know if other versions behave
the same way).

Is there a good reason for using copy-to-prn rather than 'print'?
At best it's an annoyance; at worst, it gives a bad first impression
(which is the sort of thing that makes users less inclined to pay a 
shareware registration fee...)

Granted one could always go in and print the docs manually -- but then
why bother to include the batch file in the first place?
________________________________________________________________________
Raymond W. Arritt                     | 
Assistant Professor                   |
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy        |  "People never travel to look 
University of Kansas                  |   at flat landscapes."
Lawrence, KS  66045                   |     - from _Stop Making Sense_ , 
arritt@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu             |       by the Talking Heads        
arritt@walrus.phsx.ukans.edu          |
arritt@ukanvax.bitnet                 |