gnarly printing issues

[jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

One of the deficits in working with something for a very long
time is that it becomes easier to forget problems you have
previously resolved and the details surrounding them. For that
reason, I _used_ to keep a Xy reference file for Tips, Tricks, &
Solutions. Unfortunately, several years ago I fell out of the
habit of maintaining it. Now, upon revisiting it, I find that it
is heavily weighted towards 3.5x stuff, and not nearly as
relevant.

So, I am now puzzling over a few printing questions. Hopefully
some of you are well-versed in that area.

For straight text work, I continue to get good results out of my
venerable HP-LJ II. (For awhile, it looked like the fuser
assembly might be in big trouble, but putting in a new toner
cartridge seems to have gotten rid of the smearing and
streaking.) Ever since I switched to XY-4 several years ago, I
have had my STARTUP file load the HPLJ-4.PRN file. Even though I
don't have an LJ-4. Then I manually load the HPLJ-2.PRN driver
over top of it. If I do this, the TYPEFACE menu will show me
*all* of my Speedo fonts to choose from. (About 4x more than the
standard set, as I had bought a bunch of other ones.) If I don't
do this, and _only_ load the "appropriate" HPLJ-2.PRN file, all I
get to see from Typeface select is 3 choices (!) -- Courier,
Lineprinter, and . . . Swiss (?) That doesn't account for even
the default set that shipped with XY. Why is that ? My
workaround works, but I don't understand what's going on here.

For reasons lost in the mists of time, my Startup file has an
IM=1 (Image Mode ON) setting in it, as does SETTINGS.DFL. Either
or both of these are routinely rejected with an error message,
"Image Mode Printing Not Allowed on this Printer." It is
possible this setting is a holdover from my XY-3 days --
something to do with use of downloaded Soft Fonts (?), which I
used quite a bit back then -- but there is a notation I placed in
SETTINGS.DFL years ago that says "necessary for use of Speedos
with this printer." Clearly, there was some problem back then,
and I resolved it. At one time, it worked and did something
useful. What it was and why it does not function the same way
today I do not know.

I have a lot of unusual, custom-made soft fonts, made with tools
in the SoftCraft Font Solutions Pack, and I never learned how to
integrate these with XY-4. (To some extent, the scalable speedos
reduced the need for them.)

This morning, I was printing out a multi-page inventory. On the
first and last page, I got this annoying, unwanted Header at Top
Left:

@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PCL

I know that this is a known issue, one that is resolvable and has
been dealt with more than a few times before, but I just don't
remember. If any of you can clue me in re any or all of the
above, I promise to revise my Tips File so I won't have to ask
about these again.

Thanks in advance.


Jordan