Hallo Eric! Wie geht's, mein Freund? :)
If I understood you correctly, by using FreeDOS GRAPHICS, I could send a
codepage directly to the printer's RAM (naturally, one which wasn't
already hardcoded into it). Am I right? It would be great. All the
codepages which I *created* for FreeDOS could be sent to a printer that way.
Meanwhile, I'm right now focusing on codepages/character tables which
already exist; those which were created by the major industry and
hardcoded into printers. Alain Mouette just posted links to very useful
documentation, among them a very interesting 9 MB PDF file. I'll check
that against what I have already released for FreeDOS and see if there's
something new.
My goal:
1) To find documentation on as many codepages/character tables as possible.
2) To prepare the proper keyboards to work with them.
Then, anyone could print on text mode, instead of graphics mode. That
would be as fast as the printer could print, since it would not "draw"
the characters on paper.
Therefore - yes, if you could ask around to find old handbooks and scan
only the pages regarding codepages/character tables, I would appreciate
that a lot! :)
Continuing my goal:
3) In the case of languages for which there has never been support by
the industry, I would create codepages for them.
This particular step I have already taken to assist, for instance,
all official languages of Russia's 21 republics and all official
languages written with the latin alphabet on Oceania and Africa and
several indigenous languages considered co-official on the Americas.
4) Prepare the proper keyboards to work with them.
Step already taken as well.
5) Somehow "send" those codepages to the printers' RAM. (I'm aware that
unfortunately not all printers might provide such a feature.)
(At least in my mind,) this particular step would require some
software to somehow analyze the codepages encoded into the FreeDOS
codepage libraries (CPX files) and send the necessary info to the
printers' RAM. Such step would naturally not be necessary to deal with
regular codepages, like 858 or 808, but with the codepages I created for
FreeDOS, all in the cp300xx range. This step would not be taken by me;
I've been (for a few years already) looking for someone who would
volunteer on that. Ideas are always welcome.
Well... That's it.
I thank you in advance for anything you find.
Best regards,
Henrique
Em 4/5/2011 16:04, Eric Auer escreveu:
> Hi Henrique,
>
> while I agree that it would be interesting to know which
> character byte corresponds to which character shape for
> lots of ancient printers, I almost cannot imagine any
> pre-ESC/P printer to be still working and for those it
> is always an (although slow) option to print text using
> graphics mode and the DOS EGA or VGA codepage font data.
>
> You could use FreeDOS GRAPHICS (with HP-PCL, ESC-P and
> PostScript support) but something specifically tuned to
> printing black and white text might be faster, of course
> even more relevant when the PC is as old as the printer.
>
> I remember that printers HAD dip switches or otherwise
> selectable alternate codepages, so if really needed, I
> could ask around to find old handbooks, but even those
> printers that I remember already supported graphics ;-)
>
>> Yes, dot-matrix printers are old. Yes, I might buy a modern color inkjet
>> or laser printer, no doubt about that. I don't have a dot-matrix printer
>> (anymore - I've already had an Epson LX-800 and, later, an Epson LX-300
>> and, after that, an Epson Stylus Color - the first color inkjet...
> ...
>> You see, the point is that FreeDOS might be useful for people who kept
>> their old hardware for all these years and would still like to use it,
> Regards, Eric
>
>> http://support.epson.ru/upload/library_file/14/esc-p.pdf
>> http://webpages.charter.net/dperr/links/esc_p2.htm
>
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