Re: Printers usable with XyWrite.

[jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Michael Edwards wrote:

>   This is something I know nothing about, and printers are a real mystery to
> me. I have an NEC Pinwriter P7 which I've been using with a 5-year-old 486
> desktop which uses DOS 6.22; and I also have a Canon portable printer, BJC-80.
>   I do not know if either of these uses PCL5. It seems from what I was told
> that this language is standard for desktop laser printers, so it doesn't sound
> all that likely my printers (NEC, dot matrix; Canon, bubble jet) use it.

As to the Pinwriter, there _was_ a good XY driver for the Pinwriter P6 (for XY3,
possibly for XY4), which should work. If you need this, I probably have it back in
the archives somewhere. I'm not familiar with the Canon printers. The Deskjet 500
drivers (available from the TTG website, and elsewhere) seem to be a general
template for PCL, albeit something earlier than PCL5, I think. Core functionality
will at least give you a decent starting point, and the XY printer drivers are in
English (rather than a binary code), so they can be modified per info derived from
the XY manual, though you would also need to know the printer control sequences,
which are typically found in the printer manual or optional Tech. Ref. Manual for
that printer.

There are also advocates of doing an end-run around these issues, via use of a
Postscript interpreter.

>  Because the Canon is relatively recent, I assume that XyWrite doesn't have
> a driver for it. But the NEC is much older (I don't know exactly how much,
> because I bought it second-hand about 5 years ago), and therefore it seems
> possible XyWrite might have a driver for it.
>   Does anyone know whether this is so? Does anyone know about whether either
> printer uses PCL5?

Depends what it's based on. Can you ask Canon ?

>   In short, I would appreciate any information on whether XyWrite version 4
> (for I think I will accept the offer I've been made of a copy of version 4) will
> be able to work with either of these printers.

I could easily be wrong about this -- ocupational hazard -- but it seemed to me that
XY3 had drivers for the oldest vintage printers, with XY4's covering later models
(maybe even a few that are still extant), and the most recent printer drivers being
associated with XyWin (?) Or does the latter just use the built-in printing
facilities of Win ?

>   Another thing: I started a web site this year, so writing web pages has
> become a fairly important part of my writing recently. I just wonder whether
> XyWrite is suitable for writing web pages in.

I expect it can be done, but am guessing you will find this more comfortable with a
good HTML editor, or a web page composition program.

Jordan