I am trying to print invoices (and other documents) with a logo etc. from
mvbase. The company standard is to use PCL5, but we have no control over
the physical hardware as we print to printers not owned by us.

I have created a .prn file in Windows and saved it in hex in mvBase. Both
the Windows version and the hex version equate in size (i.e.. hex = 2 x
ASCII).

If I import a small graphic I have no problem printing. However the logo is
somewhat larger (46k ASCII) and the results range from no print at all to
about half the logo printed. Also the logo graphic includes char FF.

I suspect my problem relates to the spooler as a dump of the frames indicate
about 40 characters more that the ASCII document. I have tried sending the
print stream to the printer in both small and large chunks but get the same
result.

Is there a way to simply send the job to the printer without being tripped
up by the spooler.

We have a number of forms and graphics that we load as PCL overlays
from mvBase, but we send them to the printer directly from the Windows
image file using UREAD and PRINT, e.g.:

eof = false
LOOP UNTIL eof DO
UREAD image FROM windows.file FOR blocksize THEN
PRINT image :
END ELSE eof = true
REPEAT

This seems to corral the x'FF' problem.

FYI, there's also another wrinkle to consider -- the linefeed and
formfeed delay characters emitted by the spooler. The STARTPTR command
for your PCL5 printer must inhibit them or else your PCL commands will
include extraneous x'00' characters. The approved technique is
documented on Raining Data's website:


http://www.rainingdata.com/support/d...ps/FAQTips.pdf

under the topic "Setting LineFeed and FormFeed Delays for Printers".

Thanks David

I have already tried the direct UREAD and print method with the same
results.

For whatever reason the current policy is to store all the graphics in Pick.
I have successfully emulated the desired result with clipart graphics.

I am now suspicious the STARTPTR may be the problem. I shall try it first
thing tomorrow (Monday here in Australia).

I very much appreciate your help.

"David Ousele" <deva (AT) oregoncoast (DOT) com> wrote

Thanks for all your help. Changing the term settings fixed the problem, and
the whole thing works great now.


"Rep" <picknews (AT) repertoire (DOT) com.au> wrote