Re: overprinting ASCII on Laserjet?

I am still confused on why you only have a file that is printable to a
certain printer and not the source that was originally created when
someone made the file.  Unless I am to assume the person thought they were
smarter and created this file by hand??

In any case all I can think of at this moment is that either your printer
needs to go to the shop because its misbehaving or that you should convert
the file into a format that "can" be read by todays standards...  

What OS are you using, MS-DOS/win9x?  If you know programming create a C
file that will look for all the old characters and either delete them or
replace them with something that makes sense...  I would still think you
could load this into a text editor and hunt for the funky boxes.  If you
told me what characters seem to be the bad ones I might have time to thrown
together a 10 line C program that will fix your silly dilemma.  

If you can turn it into a postscript format.  This is a standard that
shouldn't disappear.  And there are many converters from postscript to
everything else for that matter...  

tell me what you think?

Ben



On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Robert Wood wrote:

> 
> 
> Neil Franklin wrote:
> 
> > Robert Wood <rob...@ionet.net> writes:
> > >
> > > > : >make it treat a CR(Carriage return) as what it should be (reset to left
> > > > : >margin, but do not advance the line).  But no matter how I set Line
> > > > : >Termination, it always prints a line, hits the CR, and advances the
> >
> > Well actually the printer is obeying the CRs. They just have no
> > discernable result on the output.
> >
> 
> Ah, but it does, it is interpreting the CR as a line feed, if it "had no
> discernible
> result", everything would be ok on my end.
>   
> >
> > > combination are interpreted.  But in another place in the HP codes it says tha
> > t
> > > the LF (linefeed) ASCII 10 is interpreted as CR (carriage return) ASCII 13.
> >
> > Which is true.
> >
> > Try <blank> <any-character> <CR> <second-char> <CR> <LF> <FF>
> >
> > And you should find <second-char> <any-character> on the page.
> >
> 
> It actually prints as ...
> <any character>
> <second-char>
> 
> > Lasers (and most inkjets) are page printers. In these the entire page
> > is rendered onto an large slab of RAM (like an video cards display
> > RAM) and then tranfered at once to paper.
> >
> > Overprinting simply sets RAM bits, which are allready set. So you see
> > no effect, despite them being set twice. Bits are 0 or 1, setting them
> > twice does not make an 2 out of them.
> >
> > The nearist thing you can do is get an program that understands
> > overstriking and converts it into escape sequences for bold
> > printing. Like the GNU "less" file viewer does.
> >
> 
> Huh?  These "poster" files have nothing to do with "bold" printing.  The
> same
> character is not be printed in the same place.  It is usually a 0
> overwritten by a #
> then overwritten by a X.
> 
> 
> > BTW: printing the line twice with CR is the wrong way for most of
> > these programs, they usually want <char1> <BS> <char1> <char2> <BS>
> > <char2> ..., they also user <unserscore> <BS> <char> to underline.
> 
> Have you ever looked at one of these files?  Before Dot matrix all there
> was were
> line printers, so therefore you had to print a whole line at a time.  So
> you print a
> line of 0's, then you overprint with a line of #'s, then you print a
> third time on the
> same line with X's.
> 
> I understand that Laser printers are page printers and that each
> character is sent
> to the printer as a bunch of dots to fill up a space.  We will assume we
> are using a
> mono spaced font (since it is required for these type of line posters)
> and that each
> character will partially fill in a rectangle of dots (hence the 300x300
> dot
> resolution from Dot matrix that is also a part of Laser printing).  So
> "overprinting" on a Laser printer is simple a matter of filling in the
> rectangle
> that will hold the three characters that occupy the same space.  If you
> start with a
> 0 then put a # in the same space you should fill in more or the dots in
> our
> "rectangle", that when you add the X to the mix you fill in even more
> dots in our
> rectangle.   I still think some combination of the use of the
> "Transparency" setting
> on the HP may solve this, but I have not been able to find a good
> example of how to
> use it in this situation, and my trial and error hasn't produced any
> usable results.
> 
> I have seen too many print errors where text overwrote other text on my
> laser to
> just give this up as hopeless.  I was sure that someone in this group
> would have
> already worked out how to print the old line printer posters on a laser
> printer.  I
> can not believe I am the first to try this.  The Dot Matrix printer will
> eventually become an oddity that is only used in special circumstances,
> so for
> posterity sake, these "works of computer art" will have to either be
> converted to a
> new format or a method worked out to output them to the general printer
> in use
> (which is now the laser).
> 
>     Robert
> 
>