At 5:59 pm +0000 6/12/99, Aley Keprt wrote: >> It's easy if you just want to squirt it out of LPT1, with the read status >> faked to keep the caller happy. There's still a complication in that the >> Windows spooler won't see any data until LPTx is closed, so there will have >> to be something to guess when the job is considered done. It doesn't look >> as easy as you say... > >In DOS it's easy :) >Well, you can close the port when no data is printed for 5 seconds. (or >3 seconds, or 1 second...)
I doubt that would really be suitable. A lot of Sam programs will have *big* pauses between sending chunks of data (like SC_Word Pro, for example) and you don't want the port closed while the 'sam' is trying to calculate what the next line ought to look like. It probably ought to be up to the user to open and close the file - the user can probably know what's going on far more reliably than the emulator can guess. Or (... thinks ...) how about building-in an FX-80 emulator or something? Build up an A4 page in a window, let the user push a button to print it. Spawn a new window when the current page gets full or when you get a Form Feed. Arrgh. Stop me before I come up with any more impractical, complicated, time-consuming, silly ideas.... Andrew -- -- Andrew Collier ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) -- My other -- http://mnemotech.ucam.org -- .sig is a -- Part 3 Materials Science, Cambridge -- PDF file --
