PP - the Page Printer

Copyright (c) 1986, 1987

Centurion Software Corp.
3917 Garfield Drive
Stone Mountain, Georgia 30083

(404) 294-1103













Note: This document was prepared with New Word, a word
processor, and printed to a file. It is set up with a left
margin of 1", 66 lines/page, a 1 line header and a 3 line footer
including page numbers. It is NOT intended to be printed with
the Page Printer, since the file is already formatted correctly.
Use PP for programs, modem capture files, screen dumps, I/O
redirection files and so forth.

PP - the Page Printer

I License

The Page Printer is distributed via the "fairware" process,
that is, anyone may distribute the program, but if the
program is used, the user is requested to pay a $5.00
license fee. This license fee is a "per user" fee, not per
processor, therefore, if you own 10 processors, simply send
$5.00 and you may use the program on any or all of them.
You may NOT sell, rent, lease or in any other way profit
from the inclusion of this program with any package or
bundle of software without a written commercial license from
Centurion Software Corp.

II Current Version

This documentation supports version 1.7 of the Page Printer.
Any earlier versions (1.0 - 1.6) are no longer supported.
Version 1.7 adds a "wrap on word boundry" feature and the
option of suppressing the initial form feed. Version 1.7
also corrected a problem related to printing of files with
WordStar "soft" returns & line feeds.

III Version revision history

Version 1.0, the original release of the Page Printer,
supported the following options: Tab expansion, page length,
top margin, bottom margin, line wrap.

Version 1.1 added page offset (left margin), optional print
to screen, optional suppression of high bit, optional use of
line feed characters in place of form feeds.

Version 1.2 added starting page, ending page and page
numbering control.

Version 1.3 added multiple printer support (LPT1, 2 & 3),
compatability with MODE printer re-direction.

Version 1.4 improved the speed of the screen displays by use
of a public domain version of the printf function. This
version does not allow redirection of the opening messages.

Version 1.5 changed the /h (highbit suppression) to /8
(eighth bit suppression) and added /n (print line number).

Version 1.6 added /h (short header), corrected improper lack
of use of the offset when printing the header and returned
the program to the "standard" printf function, allowing
redirection. The screen displays were adjusted to allow
more entries (2 entries on some lines), and the page numbers
displayed on the screen are now overprinted, eliminating
scrolling of the screen.

Verson 1.7 added /+ (wrap on word boundry) and /i (suppress
initial formfeed) and corrected the processing of files with


Copyright (c) 1985,1986
Centurion Software Corp.
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PP - the Page Printer

Wordstar style soft carriage returns and line feeds
(Hexadecimal 8D and 8A, respectively).

IV Command line format

All options are specified in the command line. A single
character, preceded by a slash, indicates the option.
Several options must have a numeric specifier immediately
following the character, with no space intervening. For
example, /w132 specifies the Width option, with 132
becomming the paper width. The file to be printed may be
preceded by a drive designator and/or a directory path.
Options and the file may be specified in any order. The
program parses the options and interprets them accordingly.

Sample command lines:

pp /x4 /t5 /b8 abcd.c
pp /s /h help.doc /@4

V Options

The following paragraphs describe the options for the Page
Printer.

/d# Device to use. This option specifies which of the three DOS
printer devices to use. The default is 1. The program
appends the number to the file name LPT, which DOS
interprets as one of the 3 available line printers. If the
printer selected is not available, a message will be
displayed.

/p# Page length. Specifies the number of PRINTABLE lines per
page. The default is 66, for 11 inches of continuous feed
paper at 6 lines per inch. The top and bottom margins are
subtracted from this number to get the USABLE page size.

/t# Top margin. Specifies the number of lines at the top of the
page to reserve for a margin. If the number of lines is
greater than 2, then the program will print a header line in
the margin. The header will be the file name, the page
number and the date and time that the print process started.
The default is 3.

/b# Bottom margin. Specifies the number of lines at the bottom
of the page to reserve for a margin. Nothing gets printed
in the bottom margin. The default is 3.

/x# tab eXpansion. This specifies how may columns are
represented by each tab character. The default is 8.
(Sorry, I wanted to use T for Tabs but T is for Top margin.)

/o# Offset (left margin). This specifies how may spaces are to
be inserted at the beginning of each line during the print
process, to allow for holes to be punched, etc. The default


Copyright (c) 1985,1986
Centurion Software Corp.
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PP - the Page Printer

is 0.

/w# Width (right margin). This specifies how many characters,
including the offset, may be placed across the page. The
default is 80.

/f# First page. This specifies what page number is to be the
first page printed. For this process, the printing begins
when a page number is greater than or equal to the page
specified. All pages less than the number specified are not
printed. Since the file is dynamically paged during
printing, the program must read through all preceding pages
before the actual printing begins. The actual page printed
is affected by the /@ option (see below).

/l# Last page. This specifies what page number is to be the
last page printed. For this process, the page number
printed on the top of the page is the determining factor.
The actual ending page is affected by the /@ option (see
below). The default is 65,535 (2^16 - 1).

/@# start page number @. This specifies the page number to be
assigned to the first page IN THE FILE. The default is 1.
This parameter affects the /f and /l options (see above)
since both of these options operate on the page number to be
printed.

/n Print line numbers

/8 Eighth bit inclusion. This option tells the program to
print all 8 bits in each byte of the data file. The default
is that the high bit is suppressed, that is, forced to 0.
This suppression allows files created by WordStar to be
printed. Files that use the IBM graphics character set
above 7F hexadecimal should be printed with the /h option if
the printer being used can handle the full IBM character
set.

/s Screen print. This tells the program to display to the
screen, rather than any printer. The defaults are changed
appropriately. (This option was primarily used to test the
program, since I actually didn't have a printer attached
during much of the development period.)

/e Ejects (form feeds) off. This tells the program to use line
feeds rather than form feeds to advance to the top of the
next page. This allows printers that do not respond to the
form feed character to be used.

/h Use short form of the page header (Page number only) rather
than long form (Page number, day, date, time, file name).

/+ Word wrap mode ON. This tells the program to wrap long
lines (lines longer than the specified WIDTH - see /W
option) on a word boundry. (The program determines the end


Copyright (c) 1985,1986
Centurion Software Corp.
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PP - the Page Printer

of the line, then looks backward for the first "white
space". Characters up to that white space are printed and
the remaining characters are moved to the next line.)

/i Suppress INITIAL formfeed. In the normal mode of operation,
the Page Printer sends a form feed character to the printer
before printing a file. This can waste a lot of paper if
many files are printed consecutively. The /i option
suppresses the INITIAL formfeed only. Use the /e option to
turn off all formfeeds and use line feeds in their place.

Note: All options may be specified in either UPPER or lower
case. The same is true for the file.

VI Future enhancements

Future enhancements of the Page Printer will include ability
to read WordStar dot commands and make the appropriate
adjustments while printing.






































Copyright (c) 1985,1986
Centurion Software Corp.
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