Internal printer fonts

[SoftArt]

Hi,
how can I select internal Printer (EPSON TM-Txx) Fonts (FontA11) in Report Designer?
It works fine in Windows XP while the Printer is selected as Default, but not in Windows 7.
In MS-Word all the Fonts are visible and selectable.

Thomas

 

[Mike Lewis]

Are you sure have the correct printer driver installed? And that this is the printer that is selected while you are designing the report? And do you have Windows fonts that match the printer-resident fonts?

If you can't answer Yes to all three questions, then you won't see the fonts in the report designer.

I'd also ask why you want to use printer-resident fonts? Windows fonts (such as TrueType) are more flexibile, and are more likely to look exactly the same on paper and screen.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[SoftArt]

Yes to all and it works fine for more than 10 years.
There wasn´t any reason to change and I notice this only now.
The internal Epson Printer Fonts are faster than all other.

Thomas

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thomas,

I've just been doing some experimenting, and I can confirm what you are seeing. In the Font dialogue in the Report Designer, I can see printer-resident fonts under XP, but not in Windows 7. My printer is an HP rather than an Epson, but I assume the same things applies.

I don't know why that should be. And I can't think of an obvious solution.

The only thing that comes to mind is that you use the generic text driver, and send implicit escape sequences to select the printer fonts you want. But that would be quite a hassle.

I wonder if anyone else has come up againt this, and has any idea how to solve it.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Mike Lewis]

This is a long shot, but it might be worth a try:

1. Open the FRX as a table (with USE).

2. Open a Browse window and locate the row for any of the report expressions (look in the Name column).

3. In that row, open the FontFace memo. Type the font name, exactly as it normally appears in the Font menu (e.g. in Microsoft Word, or in VFP under XP).

4. Close the FRX table. Print the report.

(It would be sensible to do this on a copy of the report, or altneratively to make sure you have a backup of the FRX, FRT, etc.)

If the expression in question appears in the specified font, repeat the above for the entire report. But I'm not hopeful it will work.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[SoftArt]

Hi Mike,
thank you for spending time to test my problem.
I allow my customers to create a copy of the eport and design it indivdidual, so I can´t use escape sequences.
One way is to hack the frx in background after editing the Report or the user must copy and paste given controls.
Both are not really a good solution.

Thomas

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thomas,

For any given report, does the entire report use the same font (possibly at different sizes)? Or do you have a mixture of fonts in the report.

If you use only one font, then a possible solution would be to write a little procedure that sends an escape sequence to select that font, and to run that immediately before printing the report. The users wouldn't need to be aware of it. It would mean that the users won't see the font in question on the screen, but maybe you could live with that.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[SoftArt]

Mike,
I´m using different fonts in same report like FontA11, FontA12, FontA22 which are using there own fontsizes.

Thomas

 

[Mike Lewis]

OK, my next suggestion:

Would it be feasbile to run the reports in an XP Virtual Machine under Windows 7?

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[SoftArt]

That´s a good workaround to setup the report in development environment but not really for customers.

Thomas

 

[Mike Lewis]

Yes, I can understand that.

I guess the only options open to you would be:

1. Tell the customer to buy a modern laser printer. That would not only solve the problem, but would probably be faster, quieter, and perhaps cheaper to run.

2. Forgo the use of printer-resident fonts. But I take your point that these are much faster. That's because, if you were using TrueType fonts, you would have to run the printer in graphics mode, which involves several passes for each row of text.

3. Switch to a different reporting tool. I'm fairly sure you wouldn't have the same problem with, say, Crystal Reports. And that would also be more user-friendly when it comes to letting the user modify the reports. But of course you would have to recreate all the reports, and it would also need the users to be re-trained.

If I was in your shoes, I would go for the first option. But I don't know anything about your customers or their budgets.

Sorry I can't suggest a better solution.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[craigber]

You should rethink using printer fonts. I've seen them used, then the printer dies and the new printers don't support those fonts. It took weeks to rework every report.

Craig Berntson
.Net MVP, Author, Tech Presenter

http://blogs.msmvps.com/craigber