Hi Chris, > I'll give "printq" a try and see what happens
Hmmm I only found a 6/2000 version on the page, which is described as being from Dr Dobbs and being a user interface for PRINT. It tries to highly portable (various DOS compilers) and seems to be "1991 by Robert Mashlan, Public Domain". Most files are from 5/2000. There is no built-in help, but the following commands are okay: printq /t --> cancels all queued printjobs printq /c filenames --> cancels all selected printjobs printq /p filenames --> adds all selected files to the queue The main code is in prnspool.c, no wildcards supported. Install check is: int 2f.100 -> if return al=-1 print found Enqueue file is: int 2f.101 pack=ds:dx -> carry, ax on error pack has fields "level=0" and "pathname=(char far *)string" (pack is 1 + 4 bytes) (RBIL: if no carry, 01=added 9e=printing) Unqueue file is: int 2f.102 stringpointer=ds:ds -> ... Cancel all is: int 2f.103 -> carry, ax on error List queue is: int 2f.104 returns ds:si, carry, ax on error pointer is to array of strings, each padded to 64 bytes (RBIL: also returns error count since last read in DX...) (first empty string marks end of list) List queue ack is: int 2f.105 (needed to continue printing after getting the pointer to the live list queue array) Get status is: int 2f.104 -> carry, ax on error, and always in dx the count of printing errors (since when?) Error codes are: 0 okay 1 invalid func 2 file not found 3 path not found 4 too many files open 5 access denied 8 queue full 9 spooler busy c name too long f drive invalid RBIL also tells that int 2f.106 returns carry, ax=8, ds:si= pointer to device driver if printing, no carry, ax=0 else (useful to know which device PRINT is using at the moment) (useful to avoid concurrent printing to the same device) So... PRINTQ is just a user interface for PRINT :-) It should also work for MS PRINT, but of course MS PRINT has those options built-in anyway. FreeDOS PRINT is ancient, from 1999... It does not support ANY command line option beyond a name of a file to be printed. The first time you run it, it goes resident, and all other times, it expects a file name as command line option. Simplistic utility. Yet the source code is ca 1000 lines of Assembly... FreeDOS PRINT hooks int 5 (prtscr), 8 (timer), 13 (disk), 24 (error), 28 (idle), 2f (print api). It also checks for dos critical sections. RUN_CNT is initially TIME_TOGO (18 ticks, 1 sec). There is a byte marked with "SETONIT> <" where you can set the printer number to be used, manually. You can queue at most 10 files. What FreeDOS PRINT does is, basically, try to send data to the printer once per second, but only if neither DOS nor the disk are active at that moment. Both the timer and the idle int are used to check the moment. The int 5 hook is simply "suppress print screen while a queued file is printing". The "level" thing is read by FreeDOS PRINT as "if 0, then send form feed, and if 1, do not send form feed". PRINT takes a lot of effort to avoid collisions with other DOS activities. For example it uses its own PSP, DTA and crit err handler. It fully implements the interface used by MS PRINT and PRINTQ apart from the "get device" one. At most 256 chars are printed at a time (fixed buffer size: BUFFER DB 258 DUP..., followed by 192 bytes of local stack, quite small?). You could *tune* the print speed by patching the bytes at file offsets (add 0x100 if you are in debug) here: - 0x348 reduce from 0x12 but maybe better not to < 2 - 0x395 reduce from 0x12 ... To change the chunk size, you would have to recompile. For comparison, MS PRINT has the /T /C /P and filename options handled by the free PRINTQ, plus also: /d:device (for example LPT1, default PRN, as with ours) /b:chunksize (512-16384 default 512, twice of ours) /u:ticks (to wait till ready) /m:ticks (max wait per 1 char, uses printer default in our print) /s:ticks (how often to try to send, half of ours) /q:queuesize (1-32, default 10, as ours). So FreeDOS PRINT has default queue size 10, chunk size 256, printer PRN, poll delay 18, per char timeout as set by MODE, unknown ready timeout. All unconfigurable. MS PRINT has default queue size 10, chunk size 256, printer PRN, poll delay 8, per char timeout unknown, ready timeout unknown. So default is to print 4x faster. You said you wanted PRINT /B:1024 /Q:4 /S:1 /D:PRN which would be chunk size 1024, queue size 4, poll delay 1, printer PRN. This is 32x faster than the MS PRINT default and 128x faster than FreeDOS PRINT. You can make FreeDOS PRINT 9x faster as described above, though :-). More only with recompiling. Note that every PRINT takes a filename as input, not the actual data to be printed, so it should be easy to write a FAKE PRINT tool which only grabs the file and copies it to another file instead of actually printing it :-). I hope you find one on WWW. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
