Re: Updated prn files for XyWrite III+

[wbass@xxxxxxxx]

David Rosenthal wrote on Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:08:31 -0500
>Updated prn files for XyWrite III+

>Any thoughts?

>David

I don't know that much about the available XyWrite III+ printer files for
HP, but I just put up mine on my web site, if you care to try them.

Here is what little I know about the subject:

It seemed to me that XY3 existed in the era of downloadable fonts, font
cartridges, and such. The "architecture" of both downloadable and
cartridges seemed to be to be something of a complete nightmare and mess.
But, along about the time of the HP4 printers, ROM was getting cheap
enough that HP started building into their printers an adequate collection
of scalable fonts. Even the lowly HP4L had Courier and Letter Gothic
(fixed pitch), and CG Times and Univers (variable pitch) scalable fonts.
The HP4 is about when PCL5 was introduced.

But those printers arrived too late for XYWrite III to ever support them
well, best I could tell. At least, I never found printer files I liked,
off the shelf.

XY3, as I understood/understand it, didn't really understand scaling in
its general mechanism for constructing printer files. The big thing to
supporting fonts in XY3 seems to be the font width data, which allows
XyWrite to predict how much space each character will take on the page, so
it knowns when to break lines, with a given font and font size.

The fixed length fonts are of course easy. Anyway, I eventually ended up
constructing font width tables for Courier and Letter Gothic (the standard
PCL5 fixed fonts) in 6, 7.2, 8, 10, 12, 14.4, 16, 20, 24, 36, 72, and 144
point sizes, for CG times and Univers (the variable pitched fonts) in 6,
8, 10, 12, 14, and 18 point sizes, and for Univers Condensed, Antique
Olive, Albertus, Coronet, and Windings (or is it WingDings?) in 10 and 12
points.

But that much font information was too much for one printer file (XyWrite
has a size limit). So I ended up defining an "HP1" printer file that
"knew" some of those fonts, and an "HP2" printer file that "knew" a
different set. Each of those had four variant files -- an "economode"
(less toner used) vs "normal" mode, and landscape vs. portrait (8.5 x 11
paper only).

The print files that I made did and do serve me well, with HP4L, HP5L, and
HP6MP laser printers. I still have the the HP6. All of these printers had
all of the above scalable fonts built in, and I've never encounters
spacing errors with any of the above printers, using these files. On the
other hand, I don't do much printing.

I did a bunch of stuff in my help files to load the printer files, and
after doing so, in effect "telling me" what fonts I could now use. I think
you should be able to get the idea, if you browse the frames of my help
file that I have included.

As was often true in that era, the printer files were often used to load
"settings" that had nothing to do with printing. These printer files do
some of that at the top of the files, and you may want to strip out some
of that stuff.

Anyway, I don't remember much more than that, and haven't reworked any of
this for 12 years or so. I have put the printer files, which contain all
of the font width data that I constructed, into a zip file, along with
that part of my help file that controlled the whole thing.

The whole thing is as basspad.com/xywrite, pretty much down at the bottom
of the page, and can be downloaded. The zip itself is called XYHPPRN.ZIP.

I have no idea whatsoever how well all of this maps to printers newer than
the HP6. However, if they claim to support PLC5, that's something of a
standard, and it seems to me that they just might work okay.

Wally Bass