How I Can Speed Up Printing from Dot Matrix 1

[Guest_imported]

Hi
I want to print reports created by VFP6 thru Dot Matrix Printer and its response is very slow. Is there any possibility to speed up its printing.

Best Regds:
Ahsan Rana

 

[rgbean]

Instead of using a standard Windows printer driver (graphic output), consider using the Generic / Text Only printer driver. While you lose some flexibility and may need to provide some low-level control characters, it's a lot faster - you're actually printing characters and not 'pictures' of characters.

Rick

 

[Guest_imported]

Hi All

Where this option "GENERIC / TEXT ONLY" DRIVER IS AVAILABLE. OR HOW I CAN DO THIS. PLEASE HELP ME.

Regds:
Ahsan Rana

 

[DEDMOD]

Well, in Win2000 at least, you do Start/settings/printers/addprinter which pulls up the Printer wizard. Then next/next/lpt1 and in the list of printers select generic which has Generic/text only as one of the 4-5 choices.

I expect the process is similar in other systems. Actually I just checked and on Win 98 it's the same till you get to the print wizard where it created a printer driver database and generic there only had 'text only' as a choice, but that may vary depending on what drivers you've had installed.

Dave Dardinger

 

[rianeiromiron]

Dear Ahsan Rana:

Check this out:

Many dot matrix printers have built-in fonts, for example, courier, draft, etc. In Win98 you could use these fonts when creating a report. In the report window, choose FORMAT, FONT. In the list of fonts you should be able to see True Type Fonts, some system (I suppose) fonts and the fonts that are native to the printer (they have a printer icon in the left side). Usually you will see font sizes ranging from 5 to 20 cpi where 5 cpi fonts are "large" fonts and 20 cpi fonts are "small" or condensed fonts.
When you use this fonts in your report they will print as fast as the printer allows it. However, if you are using Win2000 (I do not know if it's the same in WinMe) you won't be able to see these built-in fonts. What I did was the following: I used a report I had created when my machine was running Win98 and somehow it kept the built-in fonts. So, whenever I need to create a new report in Win2000 I just open my old report, save it with a new name and that's it, the fonts are in the new report.

Hope that helps

Rianeiro Mirón

 

[DEDMOD]

Actually I suppose you could open up the table for your old report and copy the information about the fonts and then just paste this into any report you wanted. But it may be just as simple to copy the whole thing as you do and then modify as needed.

Dave Dardinger

 

[PeriyurParthi]

dear rana,
it is immposible to take a printout from vfp thru dot matrix, i have posted several theards regd this, but no solutions, finally what i have done is after genereating the report, better send to dotmatric thru type command, is the only way, if you use generic printer, the fonts you specify wont come in the generic text, meanwhile you cant specfy the fonmt size also, so better send thru commands