Re: New PostGhost and Xy2PDF frames - XyShell NOT Required

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Patricia M Godfrey  on Mon, 13 Dec
2004 18:08:37 -0500

Patricia:

> With what "port" should I associate my
> PostGhost.prn file in the PP table?

None. I said yesterday (I thought I was pretty plainspoken): just command
"LOAD POSTGHST.PRN" (put it in STARTUP.INT!), and then proceed to
"TYP". Forget the PP: table. Forget port remapping. Forget all that
stuff. You make it seem soooo complex. And anybody who reads these posts
would think it was MUCH more trouble than it is worth. Whereas in fact, it is
SIMPLE! You command TYP, and paper comes out of the printer. What
could be easier? Let Windows worry about the port stuff and the details. I
already said: If you can print to that printer from the Windows "Print" dialog
(e.g. print from a program like Notepad), then you can print to that printer
from XyWrite using TYP.

Look, I do appreciate that you are so meticulous. And you are, after all, the
only person game enough to try it -- or to admit publicly to trying, while
everybody else is deaf mute (even though the complaints about being unable to
print to USB are legion on this bleeping maillist). But Patricia, I don't want
to know about all this configuration stuff. I want to know what happens when
you command TYP! *If* there is an error, Ghostscript is going to *tell you*
what that error is! That info would move development forward. But I don't
think there is going to be an error. I think paper is going to come out of
your printer (assuming you've turned it on). Think about it: PostGhost works
for you. Which means that you've succeeded in getting a Xy document to display
in Ghostscript. Printing that document is just the next step -- and it is
*Ghostscript's step*, not XyWrite's -- XyWrite ports etc are irrelevant,
XyWrite itself is out of the picture at this point! I mean, good lord, haven't
you tried to print a document that is displayed in Ghostscript (after
PostGhost-ing it)? Try it: File ==> Print! TYP just eliminates all this
middleman -- it tells Ghostscript to skip the display and just print to paper.

Now, what I ask you to do is this:

1) CAll a short file into a window. A one page text file.
2) Command: LOAD POSTGHST.PRN
3) Command: TYP

One last thing, which I'm sure everybody knows already: Postscript PRN files
REQUIRE CodePage 850. Otherwise you will get a "customization error" when you
try to LOAD them, and Postscript printing will not work! You MUST set the
LAnguage default to 850 (the system default is 437, so this is a value that you
must proactively *change*):

either in DFL:
	df la=850
*or* in STARTUP.INT:
	BX d la=850Q2;*;

For the record (and the archives), let me be clear: the reason you need
CodePage 850 is NOT because they are Postcript PRNs per se, but because almost
all PostScript PRNs (and many other PRNs also) include in their SUbstitution
tables 3-byte characters on the left side of "source_char=output_$tring"
statements. And the reason why that is unacceptable to 437 is ... a long
story... best left for another time.

You're a first-class tester, Patricia, and I am sincerely appreciative.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------