Generic/Text Only Printer Driver Help Index
Contents for Generic/Text Only Printer Driver Help

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Introduction

About This Printer Driver

How To...

Add, Modify, or Remove a Printer

Enter Control Codes

Specify No Page Break

Specify Paper Size and Paper Feed

Print Extended Characters

Select Supported Fonts

Specify Wide Carriage


Introduction
About This Printer Driver

You can use the Generic/Text Only printer driver with any dot-matrix printer for printing text with no graphics. Since this driver uses the printer's internal character set (or sets), it is a convenient driver for printing quick drafts of large documents or spreadsheets.

To use the Generic/Text Only printer driver, select Text Only from the Printers list box. The Text Only printer setting enables you to print text by using dot-matrix printers. However, you may want to customize this printer setting by adding your own control codes and escape sequences.

You can configure the Generic/Text Only driver by using a single fixed-width typeface. For dot-matrix printers, it can be configured to print several typefaces. It can also print most of the extended character sets on many printers.


Adding, Modifying, or Removing a Printer

You can add, modify, or remove printers displayed in the Text Only printers list box. You can also change the printer name or printer control codes when adding or modifying a printer.

To add a printer

1	From the printer setup dialog box for the Generic/Text Only printer, choose the Add button.

2	In the New Printer Name box, type the printer's name.

Do not leave this box blank.

3	Type your printer's control codes (escape sequences) in the appropriate edit fields (as described in the table following this procedure).

For example, to enter the control code Esc Ctrl+K A, press ESC, then press CTRL+K, and then press A.

These control codes should be described in your printer manual.

4	Choose the OK button.

Printer Code	Function

Reset	Resets the printer to its power-on state. The printer's default font will be selected.

10 c.p.i. font	Prints 10 characters per inch.

12 c.p.i. font	Prints 12 characters per inch.

16 c.p.i. font	Prints 16 or 16.7 characters per inch.

Begin double-width	Prints double width ( if the printer is currently in 12 c.p.i., it will print in 6 c.p.i.).

End double-width	Ends the double-width mode.

Your new printer name now appears in the Printers list box. Select the new printer name whenever you want to take advantage of the control codes you entered.

To modify a printer name or printer control codes

1	In the printer setup dialog box, choose the Modify button.

2	Make the appropriate changes to the printer name or printer control codes.

See the Printer Code table for a description of the codes and their functions.

To remove a printer

1	In the Printer list box, select the printer.

2	Choose the Modify button.

3	Choose the Delete button.

4	Choose the OK button.

You cannot delete the printer name Text Only.


Entering Control Codes

Printer manuals describe control codes and extended character codes in several formats:

Symbol characters

Control-letter sequences

Decimal digits

ASCII mnemonics

Hexadecimal digits

The Generic/Text Only driver supports the first three of these formats. If your manual describes control codes with ASCII mnemonics or with hexadecimal numbers, you must convert them by using the ASCII conversion table in your printer manual.

To enter symbol characters

Type the code as it appears in your printer manual and on your keyboard.

For example, to enter Esc+P, press and hold down ESC and then press P.

To enter control letter sequences

Type the characters and control-letter combinations as they are described in your printer manual.

For example, to enter Ctrl+X, press and hold down CTRL and then press X.

To enter decimal character codes

1	Press and hold down ALT, and then press 0.

2	Type the numbers from the numeric keypad.

For example, to enter the ANSI decimal character code for the accented "a," you would type 225.

3	Release ALT.

The driver converts the code to a Ctrl+Char sequence if the character is not printable (such as BACKSPACE) or to a symbol character if it is printable (such as the letter H).


Specifying No Page Break

Selecting the No Page Break option enables you to print continuously without form feeds between pages.

To select the No Page Break option

In the printer setup dialog box, select the No Page Break check box.

To turn off continuous printing, select the check box again.


Specifying Paper Size and Paper Feed

The Generic/Text Only printer driver supports four paper sizes and two paper-feed options. You should select the paper-feed option and paper size you want to use when printing from a specific Windows application.


Printing Extended Characters

If you want to print any of the characters contained in the Windows character set, use the Characters option to enter its position in your printer's character-code table.

To print a special character

1	In the printer setup dialog box, choose Characters.

2	From the On Screen box, select the special character.

The number displayed to the left of the character indicates its position in the Windows character set.

3	In the On Printer box, type the character's position in your printer's character code table.

When printing, the special character is translated to the same character on your printer.

Some special characters may not be available on your printer. See your printer manual for more information about the characters supported by your printer.


Selecting Supported Fonts

You can use this driver with any printer, but it is intended especially for dot-matrix printers or printers that have similar font sets. These printers generally have between two and six fonts, all the same height, some of which are selected by a "double-width" escape.

This driver supports a maximum of six fonts with the following typeface names:

Roman 10 c.p.i.

Roman 12 c.p.i.

Roman 17 c.p.i. (16 c.p.i. or technically 16.7 c.p.i.)

Roman 5 c.p.i. (10 c.p.i. in double-width)

Roman 6 c.p.i. (12 c.p.i. in double-width)

Roman 8 c.p.i. (17 c.p.i. in double-width)

For an application to use any of the first three fonts, their control codes must have been defined in the Add and Modify dialog boxes. For an application to use the double-width fonts (in addition to the first three fonts), their control codes must also have been defined. (Several printers support all of these fonts except the Roman 8 c.p.i.)

If no fonts were defined, the standard setting for this driver is Roman 12 c.p.i. If your printer's font set doesn't fit the scheme just described, define an escape for 12 c.p.i. or for none.

In a word-processing application, you will see the width of the characters on the screen changes when you select these fonts only if a screen font set with the same typeface names is available.


Specifying Wide Carriage

Selecting the Wide Carriage option provides support for printing more than 80 characters across the paper.

To select the Wide Carriage option

Select the Wide Carriage check box in the printer setup dialog box.

To turn off wide-carriage printing, select the check box again.