Msg: Re: Misc. Questions: vDosXy

Thanks, Bill. I did a test on this and it worked. The problem was in fact the Xy-3 formatting deltas at the top of the document -- and particularly those involving PT tables. When that stuff is removed, the document imports properly, retaining Bold | Underline | Italics and such from the original. I seem to recall better results -- and possibly without that step being required -- when importing Xy-4 files, but I would need to test that separately and it might have applied only to some earlier versions of NB. (Xy-4 did not use those PT table deltas.)

And thanks again to John and Harry for their comments.

Jordan

From: William TeBrake
To: J R FOX ; "xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: Misc. Questions: vDosXy | NB

Old xyw formatting codes still work in nb10. Just strip out any font and size codes at the beginning, and you're home free.

Bill TeBrake
UMaine History, Emeritus

-------- Original message --------
From: J R FOX
Date: 06/13/2015 3:38 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Misc. Questions: vDosXy | NB

Harry,

I assume you mean do this in Xy, before trying to open the file in NB . . . because those command strings might not still work within NB. (I have no idea how much of the Xy command or etc. stuff is still directly functional inside NB.)

If this works, perhaps it can become a regular Xy-3 macro. Extra hoops to jump through however, compared to just opening a file in NB.

   Jordan

From: Harry Binswanger
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: Misc. Questions: vDosXy | NB

Since XyWrite is ASCII with mode tags added, I would assume that a search and replace to remove them would solve the problem:

ci /≪MD[W]≫//

where "≪" and "≫" are the guillemets and "[W]" is the string wildcard.

Since you don't want to lose your italics and so forth, a safer way to see what's happening would be to change the guillemets to some safe character pair, like the braces:

ci /≪/{/
ci /≫/}/

But switch to eXPanded mode before doing it.

--Harry

Thanks for your help, John. Much appreciated.

I can try to attach a snapshot of what I was seeing in NB later when I get a chance.

   Jordan

From: John Paines

To: "xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"

Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2015 8:19 PM

Subject: Re: Misc. Questions: vDosXy | NB

NB9 (and NB10, in my limited testing) opens xy3 documents without difficulty, though formatting code incompatibilities between the two programs may require updating some or all xywrite format commands in NB, which could make importing documents for the sole purpose of printing cumbersome. In any case, perhaps NB is defaulting to a small point size or is misreading a xywrite formatting command? I haven't seen what you're describing in NB9 when opening xy3 documents.

The command

USE C: C:\

has a space between the colon and the 2nd "C". You'll need another line for the "J" drive.

Though it *can* print, with limited functionality, to Laser Jet printers, DOSPRINTER can't make use HP LJ drivers and has a number of other limitations. If you want to use HP LJ drivers and PCL6, try the following:

1) download pcl6.exe from Edward Mendelson's WP reference pages, put it in the vDos directory, load a xywrite HPLJ driver and print. A pdf of your printer output will print to the screen, which can in turn be sent to any Windows printer, whether or not it's a HP LJ, and/or saved to disk; or

2) same as 1) above, but follow Edward Mendelson's additional instructions, available on the vDos discussion site, for printing directly to the printer, bypassing the need to generate a PDF on screen.

In both cases, the default font with will be HP's "Dark Courier". You can also use any of the internal scalable PCL6 fonts, with "PT" codes or embedded "PI" codes.

From: J R FOX

To: XyWrite List

Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2015 3:16 PM

Subject: Misc. Questions: vDosXy | NB

1) The last time I checked (some time ago), XySearch for the list was offline, so please excuse the fact that I probably inquired about this at some time in the past. It was my impression that NB could import, further edit, and then print Xy files: at least for Xy-4, not at all sure about Xy-3. I'm pretty sure that I must have printed out a few Xy-4 files with NB, as that was one of the main reasons why I bought Nota Bene at all -- to be able to print with contemporary and USB printers. Well, I just saw something that I know I've seen before: trying to open a Xy-3 file, at which point what I see on screen looks like very tiny gibberish that would need magnification times around a factor of 20, before I could have any idea what it might be. So, either I can't do this at all with Xy-3 documents, or I am missing something important here. A wild guess would be that it may have something to do with the Xy-3 documents being formatted with PT tables for -- in this case -- an early HP-LJ printer, and that NB is trying to render it as Arial 12, or whatever its default happens to be. Is there some simple way to compensate for this ?

I seem to recall NB-Win being able to convert To or From various formats, or that it would ask you what the format was of a document you were trying to open or import. But that was many versions ago, perhaps predating the 64-bit compatibility, and I'm not seeing that option now.

2) I'm trying to get some VDosXy syntax right in the Autoexec file.

quoting from the example file:

    rem Set other shared directories as desired;

    rem Examples:

    rem Note: Trailing "\" is required!

    rem -----------

    rem USE X: X:\

    rem USE X: C:\Xy4\

    rem USE Y: C:\XyDocs\

    USE C:C:\

Is there or is there not supposed to be a space after the first "C:", as in the rem lines ?

Or does it not matter ?

I also want to reference several directories on a J:, so would I add this

    USE J: J:\

But this can't be done in a single, compound USE line ?

I'm also confused a bit in regard to the %path% thing in the PATH line.

(Too much basic stuff we too easily forget . . . . )

3) I will probably have to read up through a bunch of past List messages, in regard to just what this DOSPRINTER thing can or cannot do, and how. I'd like to be able to connect a printer that at least emulates HP-LJ and to print through this VDosXy setup -- even if I get a viable answer to question 1 above.

Jordan