Xy-Dosemu (and Dosbox) non-Postscript printer

[Paul Lagasse pglagasse@xxxxxxxx]

I've spent some time combing the Xy list archives and searching online
for clues to enable kludge-free printing from Xy under Dosemu for a
non-Postscript printer. The solution, which perhaps I should have
figured out much earlier than now (duh), appears to be simple and
straightforward, relying only on using Robert Holmgren's POSTGHST.PRN as
yr Xy printer file and on a minor tweak to .dosemurc (the user-specific
Dosemu configuration file that is created by copying
/etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf to yr home directory and renaming it).

In .dosemurc, changing the commented-out line

# $_lpt1 = "lpr -l"

to

$_lpt1 = lpr

appears to be all you need to do.
This works seamlessly in Xy-Dosemu on a Samsung CLP-510 under Ubuntu,
with two different printer drivers, using "ty" on the command line or
Ctrl-p. In SuSe 10.2 with the same printer, I get the system printer
dialog box, OK that, and then it prints. (Once or twice in SuSe I got a
popup error that if OK'd dropped me into the system printer dialog box,
and it was fine from there; don't know why this happened, but it may
just be a result of sticky keys on my keyboard).

"lpr -l" -- the Dosemu default -- is the raw printing mode.
This won't work in Xy-Dosbox, which is somewhat walled off from the
system, but there is an easy keyboard kludge. You can force XyWrite to
print to a file that always has the same short name, then hit the key
assigned to what Gnome calls "Show the panel run application dialog"
(Alt-F2 in the default Linux key assignment; KDE calls the key "Run
command"), type "lpr filename" and hit ENTER and you're done. If the
filename you print to is short and in yr home directory, then "lpr 1"
(for ex.) is all you need type (Dosbox uppercases its filenames, so I
used a number to avoid the case-sensitivity issue).
If anyone is using Linux, XyWrite, POSTGHST.PRN, and a non-Postscript
printer, I'd be interested to know if editing Dosemu's lpr setting or
"lpr filename" works (or has worked) for you. My apologies if this has
been noted before on the list and my search missed it, or if this is old
news to Xy-Linux folks.


Paul Lagasse