Re: No cost way to print to USB port

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

> 've been (gratefully) using Tim Baehr's wordpad
> program--reprogrammed for MSword--for a while now in order
> to print to my USB printer.
>
> I was assuming that dosprint would allow me to print
> directly from XYdos without going through the
> conversion/reformatting/lock-up of the original XYdos file.

It's experientially the same.
> Using dosprint, how many steps are involved in dosprint's
> printing a XYdos file? I gather from what you've written
> here that it may not be a simple matter of hitting CTRL+P
> and watching the XYdos file print.
No. You get an intermediate screen, created in Windows by dosprint, and
that is a print-preview screen. It has an icon that says "Print" and you
just click on that. Then, after that, I forget whether you have to click to
close that preview-window. But experientially, the feeling is the same for
using Tim's program or dosprint. Tim's creates an intermediate (.rtf) file,
but you face an equivalent with dosprint: you have to create an
intermediate file with the escape codes (i.e., fo.tmp, if you don't specify
otherwise).
>  I'd be willing to spring
> with the $105 if it were.
I have been experimenting with several programs, so my recollection of
dosprint in particular is shakey, but I *think* you can set it to bypass
the preview-screen. You can easily check on this by downloading the
evaluation program (it's small and no big deal to install).
The advantage of doing it with Tim's program is that you not only get a
preview, you get an editable preview. Of course, that comes with a
disadvantage: the change you make to the Word version will not be reflected
in the Xy original, so making changes in Word gets things out of sync.
For those of us with access to a network, here's what I want to know: since
I can print to a USB printer from Xy if that printer is attached to another
printer on the network, why can't I set up something to send it to itself
over the network? That is, my computer is on the network; Xy can print to a
USB printer over the network, so why can't I send the job to the network,
then back to myself qua networked machine, and out my computer's USB port
to the USB printer?


Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx