Printing graphics characters with XY

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

When someone poses a XY-3 related question here, I usually have
to pass on attempting an answer, because it has just been too
long since I really used it, and I just don't recall a whole lot
of specifics. Now, ironically, I'm in the position of seeking an
answer myself, to a question that at least passes through this
territory.

Today, I needed to send a fax cover page to someone, along with a
dozen or so following pages. This cover page is one I've used
many, many times over the years, though apparently not at all
recently. It is a modified template from the library of Form
Tool Gold, version 3.0. I think that I mostly used to fill in
some blank fields and then print it out via FTG. But, for
unknown reasons, this did not work at all today. Same problem as
using Xy 4.018, with most of the available Speedo typefaces (and
I have a bunch of extra ones, over and above the stock set we got
with Xy4DOS): the heavy fill-in boxes, single lines, and double
line borders all print out as some foreign "a" character, with
circumflex, grave, or whatever that darn thing is called.

Now I used to do this all the time, with no problem, using Xy-3.
While I really had no time to experiment this afternoon, I
essentially had no choice. Here's what I discovered, with scant
understanding of the underlying issues (other than that a given
typeface much contain certain graphics characters, in order for
this to have any chance of working), purely by trial and error.

XY-4: A few of the typefaces had the requisite characters, but
the margins and line-up of the form just could not be futzed with
enough to make it come out acceptably. The only one that worked,
straight up, was STANDARD (not to be confused with
Standard.Prn). I'm glad I stumbled across that, otherwise I
never would have managed to print this page. XyWin: no idea what
I'm doing here, but it never worked. My HP-4 would blink as if
initiating a print job, but then just stop blinking, and nothing
ever happened. No error messages either -- not from the printer,
nor from OS/2. Strange. PostScript printer driver under 4.018
(this printer has a PostScript card installed, and I have used it
successfully): print job vanishes into the aether, as with XyWin.

Xy-3 had been off my hard drive for a long time, but I put it
back to test this. Using 3IIIDJ.PRN (which I rememberd working
way back when), positive results: what I saw on screen printed
out exactly, as it had with the STANDARD speedo choice under
Xy-4.

If anyone understands this stuff and is willing to enlighten me,
I'd sure like to find out. Can we do basic-to-middling graphics
character printing with Xy -- any version -- or is this just a
type of print job that is owned by the abommination from Redmund
?

Jordan