USB printers again

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Re Paul Breeze's solution: there are two issues, it seems: 1) Printer
contol language compatibility. Xy has drivers for older HPs, Epsons, and
PostScript printers and they can usually be used with more recent
versions of those printers, though one won't get all the features of the
newer printers. For example, I use the HP LJ2P driver to print to a
Deskjet 855C at the office with decent results (cannot get a smart
apostrophe, but that may be a function of HP's different character set
assignments); I used to use the Epson LQ850 driver with my Stylus Color
800 before it died; Postscript is more iffy: the Post 45N driver sends
the office HP 5000N in Postscript mode into a frenzy of printing pages
with a couple of letters of code.
2) Routing the data: Xy expects to send data to a serial or parallel port
or a file. It never heard of USB and cannot recognize a USB port. So we
need some routine, external to Xy, that will map or route what Xy sends
to an LPT or COM port or a file to the USB port. Ironically, in Windows
9x, you can print to a file and then print the (printer-coded) file ONLY
by using the DOS "copy filename.ext lpt1" command, not by drag and drop.
(There is an exception, IIRC, for Postscript.) As I may have mentioned my
(AMI) BIOS has a setting "USB for DOS," but no documentation on how to
use it. It's obviously possible if HP did it for its printer. I also note
that Linux had methods for printing to USB ports. Perhaps we should
contact the Free Software Foundation and see if anyone there would be
interested in writing an LPT to USB mapping routine. We are not the only
DOS diehards. Our borough engineer tells me he used certain CAD
applications that can only run under DOS.
Patricia