#HP IIIP Driver?
12 messages in this thread
Dear Sysop, Is there an Amiga printer driver for the LaserJet IIIP that
takes advantage of the inhanced resolution of that printer? The salesman
(taking a risk there) told me a special driver was necessary to access that
capabiligy. Thanks for you help. Chris
Christopher,
We have a library full of printer drivers in AmigaUser, Library 10. You
might like to look through there and see what we have. Also, you might
get more response from your request in AmigaUser. That's where the DTP
people hang out, and this is really a DTP kind of question. This forum
attracts more of the programmer types. They are quite likely to know the
answer – but not so much as the ones over in AmigaUser.
Thanks, Betty. I'll check AmigaUser and the drivers out. I use
PageStream, and they were told by the HP people that since PageStrem sends
a page as a graphic, there was nothing they could do to get to the enhanced
resolution. I was wondering about just general use, letters from
WordPerfect, etc.
Are you the Betty who used to be a sysop in the C64 area? Do you live in
Washington state and are you a systems programmer for a bank or something?
Best, Chris
I think you are thinking of Betty Knight, who is still the sysop on
CBMART. I'm not the same one. She's quite a lady, isn't she?
Christopher,
The salesman is full of it – to put it bluntly! The Resolution Enhancement
Technology (RET) is hardware based inthe printer and can not be accessed
from software. RET can be turned on/off from the Menu on the top of the
printer.
I have the same printer and think it is great! Be sure to get some more
memory for it.
The best driver I know of for the printer (or any HP II and up clone) is
called HP_LJ.LZH in the printer driver section of AmigaUser. Of course I
am biased – I wrote it. Can't take all the credit for it, since it is
based on CBM's driver with mucho improvements in the graphic printing area.
Have fun!
73, Kelly
Kelly,
I've been using your printer driver for my HP III for about a week now, and
have printed several dozen "important" documents without any problems.
Any chance you'd consider re-working the driver to output exactly 8.5×11.0
without built-in margins? I know there's an unprintable border, but when I
use programs like PPage, etc…to construct documents I usually put my own
margins in.
I'm just so tired of the tiny offsets that screw up the formatted output.
I can even use Prefs to select a margin when printing ASCII, so I'd love it
if when I select a margin in Ppage as 1" it would come out on the paper as
1" and not 1" plus some odd offset.
Let me know what your thoughts are!
(BTW, i actually looked at the C-code in the C= manuals, but being a real C
novice and not really knowing what to do with the assembly language modules
of the code decided not to even play around with it)
Also, whenever I use your driver from PPage, it tells me the page output
size is 8.0×10.6 inches. Know why that happens?
THanks for listening!
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim – read the ReadMe file with the driver! The printer driver reports to
PPage what the Printable page size is. <grin>
8.0×10.6 is the maximum printable area for letter size paper. The "tiny"
offsets are 0.2 inches for the top and bottom of the page and 0.25 inches
for the left and right sides of the paper.
8.5×11.0 page size: I just flipped through the Tech Reference Manual and I
can't find any way to set the logical page width to that of the paper. The
11 inches vertically would be easy to do, but the printer driver would have
to eat the data for the first 0.25 inches of each row. This shouldn't be
too hard to do – just a matter of doing it. The printer would eat any data
going past the right edge of the logical page. I will consider adding this
next time I do any work on the driver.
I cheat when I use PPage. I set the page size to 8.0×10.6. It is possible
to use PPage (3.0) with the page size set to 8.5×11.0 and not have offset
problems. You use the offset (x and y) option in the print requestor. You
would have to set the x value to 0.25 inches and the y value to 0.2 inches
– these might have to be negative, I can't remember. But for this to work
properly, you MUST be sure there is nothing printable in the left 0.25
inches and the top 0.2 inches, or PPage will not do the offset. You will
have to play with this and see how it works for you.
I'm no C expert either! Learn by playing – there is no other way unless
you are paid to program <grin>.
73, Kelly
Kelly,
I *did* read the readme file that came with the driver… I understand at
least figuratively why the 8×10.6" information is passed to PPage, but
didn't understand why it was 10.6 and not 10.5 (or 11…) <grinback>
Again, regarding the 8.5×11 inch dimensions of the logical page…what i
was saying was that since I usually use formatted output, it doesn't matter
to me if the driver "eats" the first 0.25 inches of the output…it's
usually blank because of the margins. What i wasn't clear on and was
hoping that a correction of this sort would do was to eliminate the "tiny"
offset problems that many software programs outputting via prt: seem to
have.
Again, I'm very thankful that you've taken the time to write the driver;
it's workable, and I like it at least as well as the Commodore one.
And thanks for at least considering it in your next look at the driver!
.. Tim Trompeter…
Thanks, Tim.
If I wasn't clear, 11.0 – 0.2 (top no print area) – 0.2 (bottom no print
area) equals 10.6 inches. For width, 8.5 inches – 0.25 (left no print
zone) – 0.25 (right no print zone) equals 8.0 inches.
When you had a dot matrix printer before your laser printer, you must have
had one of the models that could print from the left perf all the way to
the right perf! – a full 8.5 inches. There are a number of dot matrix
printers that do not do this. Guess what, the ones I owned do not – they
only print 8 inches wide. I am used to having the quarter inch margin on
both sides of the paper outside the print zone.
Well, I went and modified the driver. In one density setting (6), the
driver tells the system it can print the full size of the paper. When
density == 6, the driver will eat the first 0.26 inches of each row. This
is 80 dots at 300 dpi (10 bytes of data) – the only density this mode is
allowed in. The cursor isn't move down 60 dots from the top of the page,
either. Did some testing with ProPage (3) with a box that starts at
1.0,1.0 and extends to 7.5,10.0, border turned on (hairline) and the
printed output matched up perfectly.
Remember, this is only for graphic printing. It sounds like you want the
same thing for text printing – no can do. You will have to take into
account the existing 0.25 inch no print area on the left and right sides of
the paper.
With revision 1 of the driver (the one you have), the offsets for ProPage
that work for me are x = -0.26 inches, y = -0.2 inches. Am pretty sure
this only works correctly if the left 0.26 inches and the top 0.2 inches
have white space.
You should see how FinalCopy works. It knows letter size paper is
8.5×11.0, but it lets you set up the left, right, top, and bottom no print
zones. This works excellently. You still set up your margins with respect
to the paper size, but you don't have to worry about any offset problems
like ProPage has.
I hope to upload the revised driver today.
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Kelly,
Thanks for all your work on the printer driver! I'll be looking for the
newly-modified version online and can't wait to try it outk!
The graphics/print difference shouldn't make any difference to PPage, since
it dumps graphic images of its' pages and ignores text as text.
lastly, does your printer driver use HP PCL5 specific commands? I've
wondered about adding a bunch of them the way they're described in the
manual, but haven't figured out if it'd be worthless or not to add 'em. I
suppose it'd at least give me some program writing experience, eh?
Take care!
.. Tim Trompeter…
Tim, the driver should be over in AmigaUser. Hope this solves everybodies
"offset" problems with ProPage.
The driver doesn't use any PCL5 commands, so it should work in any model
LaserJet or clone – as long as they have enough memory for a full page of
300 dpi graphics to use the Density 6 option.
I can't remember what PCL5 added anymore <GRIN>! Been too long since I
looked at the manual. This winter I will sit down and see what should be
added to the driver to take advantage of PCL5 features. What I really want
to see is a program that can take a WB CG fonts file and convert it to the
proper format for downloading to the printer as a scalable CG font. Then
have GoldDisk come out with a version of ProPage with enough smarts to take
advantage of the fonts in the printer. PP would only have to worry about
graphics and such – much faster printing should be the end result if they
did it right.
Learn by doing…. the only way
73, Kelly
[ continuation ]
73, Kelly