Printing Utilities for DOS

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1) Programs which save paper, either by printing two logical pages to each physical page, but using a smaller font than the default font - or by allowing you to print on 2 sides of each page.

Of the first type is DJLP.

DJLP- print 2 pages of ASCII text onto one page (Desk/LaserJet). Jeff Miller. (1993)

ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/printer/djlp_114.zip

The second type of program is a bit dangerous because the strategy is to print the odd pages of your file first, have you turn over the stack of pages in the printer, and then the print the even pages. If anything goes wrong (e.g., the printer feeds 2 papers in as one, a page prints bad or blank), the page sequence gets messed up. A safer but slower alternative is a program that stops printing after each page which allows you to turn over the page before resuming.

Examples of these programs are:

PrintDOC--printing text files on both sides of sheets of paper. Phillip Garding (1988)

http://www.geocities.com/rlcgreen/bin/ get printdoc.zip

Ya2sider- Yet another 2 sider printing program. Ted Medin. (1994)

http://www.geocities.com/rlcgreen/bin/ get ya2side8.zip


2) Another class of programs tries to minimally prepare dos files for decent page printing by letting you: set the page margins, adjust the number of lines on each page, put a header on each page with a page number, at least and perhaps a user defined header and footer.

Examples of this type of program are:

pr- The classic unix type program (which also can print 2 files as 2 columns on one page):

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/pc/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2gnu/txt20b.zip (includes pr, protected mode, djgpp)
ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/pc/simtelnet/gnu/gnuish/dos_only/tut111ax.zip (includes pr, real mode)

and GO-LJ-PRINT- print ASCII text files on HP-Laserjet compatible printers with easy selection of font, symbol set, two-sided printing etc., automatically using multi column printing. Free for non-commercial use. Gunther Olesch. (1997)

ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/pc/simtelnet/msdos/laser/gop11.zip


3) Some programs try to give you some control over the print process or print queue, similar to the windows print manager. They for instance, let you pause the printer after a page, examine, suspend, stop and start jobs in a dos print queue, etc. Another limitation of the dos print command is that you cannot pipe text to it, for instance cat file | print.

See LPR and LPQ: LPR: pipe standard input into a spool file and display. LPQ: manipulate the print queue. Richard Brittain. (1989)

http://www.geocities.com/rlcgreen/bin/ get lpr-lpq3.zip


4) These programs, redirect data sent to the the parallel port for printing, to a file instead.

LPT2DSK - Capture printer output to disk file. George G. Bouche (1986).

http://www.geocities.com/rlcgreen/bin/ get lpt2dsk.zip

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PRN2FILE- Redirects print jobs to a disk file.

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A few programs on these pages support printing- but have no "save to file" option. PRN2FILE is a TSR that provides a means of redirecting print jobs to file(s). By default, successive print operations are appended to a single file, but the program may be invoked repeatedly to change the filename. Option to uninstall from memory.

Usage: PRN2FILE [path][filename][/Pn][/Bnn][/F][/A][/U]
Run PRN2FILE with the desired filename to activate it.
Run it with a different filename to change destination file.
/P to designate the printer number (defaults to 1)
/B to enter buffer size in K bytes (defaults to 4)
/F to print just to file and not to printer (default is both)
/A to append to file (default is to create new file)
/U to uninstall the program

This util may have gone through 3-4 revisions by different authors: the original version (v. 1.0, prn2file.zip, 1987) is still around- the latest "v. 1.1-John Durso" below (1992) adds reminder beeps to indicate that prn2file is working [note that the docs omit discussion of some switches (see asm source file)]. This 1.1 version seems to be derived from two prior independent revisions (c. 1989 and 1991?) which I don't have links to.

download prn2fil3.zip (14K)


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