Re: RH Macon assignments

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from michael.norman@xxxxxxxx on Sat, 04 Jan 2003 15:29:53
-0500


> You had two type-o's, extra spaces, second one
> prevented the cap macon from working.

Nooooo I didn't -- but you do. You need to perform a pure *Ascii text* SAVE
(maybe a "Save As", depending upon your mail client) of the whole msg -- of the
entire POP file. In fact, it already IS a POP file, so just find the
"filename.POP" (if you have a decent mailer, it should list the filename) and
open it in XyWrite!

Then, you do nothing whatsoever to the message, no stripping, no nothing. I
wrote it in XyWrite, so what you should have in front of you is a 1:1 copy of
what I wrote. Command DECODE with your cursor positioned anywhere
above the code, and the XPLeNCODEd section will expand.

If, on examination, you find that your mailer altered my message and put in
those spaces and other errors, then you need a new mail program.

Alternatively, if none of that works, then grab
 http://xywrite.org/msg00021.htm
at XySearch. Highlight and Copy the XPLeNCODE part, from above it to below it.
Paste it into a XyWrite Dos box (Alt+Space-E-P). Position cursor above
"XPLeNCODE" line. Command DECODE. Result (I can only vouch for
Mozilla aka Nauseator): perfect. No garbage, no nothing. I shudder to think
if that replacement FB< command for your HP4 PRN file gets similarly mangled...

Anyway, beyond that, the macron thing works, right? It's simple and
straightforward. What's really going on there is that the PC or PI command
does just one thing: it enables you to send a backspace command to the printer
that is not filtered through your PRN file. If it was filtered, it would no
longer be a backspace. So PC and PI are just backchannels that bypass the PRN
file and enable you to directly manipulate the printer. That's the whole of
it. When PCL gets the backspace command, it performs some very clever
gymnastics. It pushes (remembers) the current print head position, backs up,
prints the next character sent to it (precisely positioned in the center of the
previous character, whether wide or narrow -- the bloody thing is smart!), and
then pops the old print head position (goes back where it started). XyWrite is
not as smart as PCL [H-P's Printer Control Language], unfortunately. XyWrite
ignores the PC|PI command (it has no idea what the content of that PC|PI
command is), but it doesn't ignore the overprinted character (the macron in
your case); instead it adds the macron to the width total for the current line.
The consequence is that with a  text, it thinks it has reached the
end of the line when it is actually one character short of the end -- one
character per PC|PC command -- which results in rag right. I've never found a
workaround -- although as I write this, hmmm, maybe if you push the original
position, then use a control code instead of a real backspace char, ...
Anyway, if you're not right JUstifying, who cares.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------