Re: Kerning?

["R Tennenbaum" rtenn@xxxxxxxx]

RH --

I give up -- I just can't seem to get any sort of driver to make this
change -- neither HPDJ550C.PRN nor HPDJ500.PRN will kern using the PI
(RJ's or TB's), however I iterate it (using:

	COURIER10
	SZ=12PT
	SY=23Z,0,0,3

in a style, with justification off. Of course I'm sure I could go
into the printer file and mess about, but unless there's a quick and
easy way to do this, I may be better off working around it.

Incidentally, I had never seen IDKEY.PM -- astounding, marvelous. I
should say that I'm also a little leery of the practice of uploading
files to the list, only because last year one listserv drove half of
us off after some server in Hong Kong kept rejecting one particular
message that contained a 75k GIF, sending it *back* to the list --
which, since of course it sent it back to the same subscriber like
any good listserv, kept on getting it back in what seemed like
geometrically escalating quantities.

But I can't complain abuot getting things like IDKEY, in fact if I
get a chance this weekend I may try reinstalling REORGaNIZe, which I
couldn't get loaded -- pray, if I have smartset.U2 running just fine,
where in it should I merge/append reorganize.u2?

Rafe Tennenbaum


>> I can't find this in the XyDos IV docs: how can I change the spacing
>> between characters in a word? Eg,
>> 	J a c k  P a a r
>> instead of
>> 	Jack Paar
>> except of course using points or fractions of an inch instead of
>> whole spaces.
>
>I don't know of any global XyWrite setting. But there are two general
>approaches to a solution. Most laborious is to alter a bitmapped font, e.g.
>add a character to the font that simply outputs space in the desired
>amount, or globally change the right offset for all characters (sounds
>difficult, but if you have the right tools, it's really a piece of cake).
>Probably easier for most people would be to incorporate within their
>documents direct codes that move the cursor (printer head) to the right by
>a desired amount. Unfortunately, there was a wicked problem under 3+, that
>you could only issue seven PI commands per line (or was it per para? -- I
>forget); "J a c k  P a a r" alone would need +|- eight; so this rendered PI
>pretty useless under 3+ (Bob Locher and I had a compleat kerning system for
>Xy3+ finished and ready-to-run, which was stymied by this ding-dong bug,
>only discovered in the late stages of testing). Whether that limitation
>still applies in Xy4, I dunno (I think Sig overcame it -- I should retool
>the kerning idea for Xy4...). But you could assign a PI command to a key,
>thus (move cursor 1/10th inch on X axis if resolution=300x300dpi):
>
> nn=NOBX,P,I, ,{27},*,p,+,3,0,X,Q2
>
>or Put it in one of half a dozen other ways ... This technique will work
>with any PCL printer, i.e. H-P laser, inkjet, whatever. You gotta turn JU
>off (i.e. set NJ), because your PI command isn't reckoned within Xy's
>running count of character widths (how could it be? PI is a wild, anything-
>goes, manual intervention); you may need to insert some manual carriage
>returns, if you use too many spaces on one line, lest print run off the
>page toward the Orient.
>
>
>-----------
>Robert Holmgren
>holmgren@xxxxxxxx
>-----------
>