Text Only printing causes V to send text directly to the printer, bypassing the Windows printer driver. This will normally be used to print to a very old printer that is not supported by Windows.

 

There are 2 ways of starting Text Only printing.

 

The first is to simply select Start Text Only Printing from the menu that is displayed when you click on the More button.

 

The second is to print to a printer that uses the Generic/Text Only printer driver. This is usually found under the manufacturer of Generic in the Add Printer Wizard. If a generic printer driver is used, V will bypass the Windows driver and print directly to the printer (unless Text Only printing has been disabled).

 

Text Only printing may be configured by selecting Text Only Options from the menu that is displayed when the More button is pressed. You will probably need to know certain technical information about the printer in order to configure it correctly (do you still have the manual?). The following options may be specified:

 

Disable Text Only Printing

Enable this if you really want to use the Windows printer driver (which will normally be bypassed).

 

Page Size

The page size of the printer in columns and rows. The column size will usually be 80 or 132 and the number of lines between 60 and 66.

 

Margins

The number of columns (or lines) to skip before printing each page. Note that the Page Size should include the margins. For example, if the page width was 80 columns and the left and right margins were 5 characters, the printable page width would be 70 characters.

 

Send after each LINE

This tells V what to send to the printer at the end of a new line. It will usually be one of:

 

CR                Carriage Return (Hex 0D)
LF                Line Feed (Hex 0A)
CRLF                A CR followed by a LF
Other                You may specify and of end of line character sequence if it is not one of the above. The format of the character sequence is described below.

 

Send after each PAGE

What to send to the printer at the end of each page to advance to the next page. It will usually be one of:

 

FF        Form Feed (Hex 0C)
Blank Lines        Advances to the next page by a series of blank lines (dependant on the page height).
Nothing        Send nothing
Other        Specify your own end of page character sequence.

 

Send at Start of file

Character sequence to send at the start of the file (perhaps to put the printer in condensed mode).

 

Send at END of file

Character sequence to send at the end of the file.

 

Delay after each LINE and/or PAGE

You may also tell V to wait after printing each line and/or page. The delay is specified in milliseconds. For example, 500 milliseconds equals half a second.

 

A delay may be necessary if you find that the printer is losing characters due to its buffer not being large enough.

 

Character Sequence Format

 

To specify a character sequence to be sent to the printer, simply type in the characters (if they are alphanumeric). For control characters, type a % followed by the 2 digit hex code.

 

For example,  to send a LF/CR instead of a CR/LF you would specify %0a%0d. To send the ESCAPE (hex 1b) character followed by the letter A you would specify %1bA.

 

Notes

 

See also Raw/Binary Printing

 

Print Preview will probably not work correctly for Text Only printing.