Hello all,
I have been experimenting with XyWin printing. It is quite a complex
system with options to avoid (as Edward has pointed out in his
introduction) and others to use. My conclusions so far:
1) the XyWrite drivers and the font matching system (and in particular
Win/Xy printer switching) do not produce acceptable results. I could not
get the font assignment tables to function the way the XyWrite
documentation suggested,
2) the Windows drivers are the way to go. Under otvdm, I could change
the driver without a freeze only to a few drivers that I had installed.
I ended up using "Generic Color PS for Commercial Printing" (which was
distributed with MS Publisher, downloadable from:
https://www.helpjet.net/Fs-16227923-11324679-43932824-extract.html)
3) as I could not get Edward's PrintFilePrinter to work, I chose to
distill PS files made by the PS driver. So far so good, professional
results, relatively easy and needing no folder watching or additional
software,
4) the font selection is limited, but it uses fonts installed in my
system. Unfortunately, these are not the fonts I would like to use. It
seems that this list is linked to the fact that EnumFontLimitation=1 is
on. This is related to "callback for EnumFontFamiliesEx16" line 419 ff.
of winevdm/gdi/gdi.c
(https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/blob/c758c63cd6d59fa5da2a9868b7c57436483d3d09/gdi/gdi.c),
which has a list of fonts to show when EnumFontLimitation=1 is true. It
would be really nice to able to select the fonts that are shown in XyWin
(e.g. standard PS fonts). Otvdm.ini could have a section for such a
list. Is this a reasonable feature to ask from the developer or is it
very difficult to accomplish
5) On the whole, I am beginning to think that in this virtualized
incarnation good old XyWin could be a viable modern alternative to a
vaporware future edition. It is runnable, and as the menus are editable
by expert users, it could be streamlined and stripped down to
essentials, and the worst pitfalls eliminated by deleting superfluous parts.
Best regards,
Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxxxx
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