Page Length

[dcomartin]

I am printing 68 lines on longer paper that WILL fit all the text. But the printer always stops printing at the regular point of a standard page. I have tried using _plength but it isnt doing anything. Should I be looking into using PCL codes again?

 

[tviman]

Just so I understand, you're printing 68 lines of text on paper that is longer than 11" (legal size - assuiming you're in the US) but the printer ejects the longer paper as if it were normal size. If so, then you need to do one of 2 things: set the printer properties to accept the longer paper (through the Windows print property dialog box) or you can issue a PCL command that tells the printer that you're using longer paper. The latter would be the preferable method but BE SURE that you reset the printer after the job is done - otherwise you're going to have a bunch of angry people chasing around the building!

There's always a better way. The fun is trying to find it!

 

[dbMark]

Although you can manually change the printer's default settings on the printer's control panel, doing so means you'd have to change it back right after you're finished. Not fun after the 100th change. So avoid this is possible.

Usually the default number of lines is set to 60 lines at 6 LPI. If you're using 14 inch paper, then 78 lines would be the equivalent to maintain a half inch border at top and bottom. This command sequence should set it to legal (14&quot paper, note that what looks like a "1" is actually a lowercase L:

??? CHR(26)+"&l3A"  && 14" Legal
??? CHR(26)+"&l2A"  && 11" Letter
??? CHR(26)+"&l26A"  && European A4

In case you want to change the top margin:

??? CHR(26)+"&l3E"  && I think 3 lines is the default

You can reset the printer by using this code when finished printing:

??? CHR(26)+"E"

dbMark