Generic/Text printing to Epson DM in 4.18

[Ben Peterson]

I'm in testing of version 4.18 prior to migrating from version 3.9x.

Nearly all of our printed reports are formatted in text-only and we do not anticipate extensive formatting (fonts, cpi, etc.) for future printed reports. No frills!

The problem/issue: Printing to Epson Dot-Matrix printers in 4.18 ultimately ends up sending PCL to the printer.

Configuration I'm currently using:

Substitute command:
CONFIG SUB PRN:/10 DIRECT:/printername

Localhost print driver:
Generic/Text Only

This appears to work fine when printing from the machine the printer is physically attached to.

When selecting the printer share from another host, i.e. DIRECT:/\\hostname\sharename, the printer is sent PCL, not straight text.

Remotehost print Driver:
Drivers for the printer are at Generic/Text Only on the remote host

The only "workaround" I have found is to not include printer.sys in brconfig.sys. Again, this is not a large problem as all our reports are designed around straight text output...

Any experience with this issue is greatly appreciated!

Ben

[Gabriel]

If printer.sys is the culprit, then you must be printing some printer.sys substitute statements to the printer, which printer.sys is turning into PCL.

If you give me more information about what you're printing, what specific substitute statements are getting substituted with PCL, and what your printer.sys file looks like, then I can be of further assistance.

You either need to tell BR that the printer type for your epson printer is not a PCL type, and then add lines to printer.sys for the type it is (name it something like DOT.)

Or you need to start using the real printer driver for your epson, and allow printer.sys to do the substitution statements to use NWP to print to it.

Ultimately, this is where you want to go: You want to use NWP in your BR programs, and you want to use the proper Epson printer driver in windows, not Generic/Text Only.

This will allow your printing to work in the most flexible way possible, allowing for future printers, printing over the network, and printing over USB ports. It will also allow your reports to run on any printer, so you won't be stuck with the epson dot matrix printer anymore.

This is the proper way to fix this problem, but it may require a little bit of attention to the specific substitute statements you're using in each of your report programs.

Gabriel

[GomezL]

Printer.sys comes with a bunch of PRINTER statements.

something like this

PRINTER TYPE PCL select DIRECT:
PRINTER TYPE PCL select PRN:
PRINTER TYPE PCL select :\\

What you need to do is add some commands like this:

Printer Type TEXT select LPT1
Printer Type TEXT select \\WS3\CARDS

LPT1 & \\WS3\CARDS are examples of "Dot Matrix Printers". that should use the "TEXT" translations.

Or you can do something like:

PRINTER TYPE NO-TRANS select :
PRINTER NO-TRANS [CHECKPRINTER], "NO-TRANS No Translation Implemented"


NO-TRANS is a Printer Type with absolutely no translations defined. I use this printer type to "Debug" my print stream.

[Gabriel]

I like that. Thats a great idea! I'm going to start using NO-TRANS to debug printer problems too

[Ben Peterson]

@Gabriel

I'm attaching my brconfig.sys and printer.sys... I still don't have my head around, I guess, where the printer type/selection is being made within the new (to me, anyway) structure of things.

Agreed, I'd like to be able to end up with NWP, but must have high-speed, low quality (draft?) from my Epson dm printers... I have no immediate (or even forseeable) use for NWP, but who knows what will be coming...

Currently none of the reports I've tested invoke any kind of special printing commands... simply "PRINT #255:" statements... and they still end up sending PCL to the printer as stated in the original post (when originating from a remote host to a peer-to-peer shared network printer).

Thanks,

Ben