I wrote this program mainly out of frustration with other print programs I
have on my system. The problem is that I would like to be able to print big
files in the background. I don't like DOS's PRINT because it is flaky and
occasionally crashes, and it installs itself permanently and takes up memory
even when it isn't needed. Being a fan of the DESQview multitasking shell,
I thought I could print files in the background on it by simply running some-
thing like this:

TYPE file >PRN

in a background DOS task. But no! Whenever a task starts printing, all other
tasks "freeze", so I can't do anything else with the computer while the one
task is printing. So being the kind of brain-damaged soul who solves simple
problems with complex solutions, I wrote my own print program which goes
directly to the printer port, bypassing DOS and BIOS. Thus it works smoothly
all the time, even running in the background under DESQview (or some other
multitasking shell). It can print one file, or a set of files whose names
are specified in another file.

The command format is:

QP [options] filename to print one file, OR

QP [options] @filename to print a set of files whose names are in the
specified file (a simple text file with one
file name per line). "@" files can be nested
(i.e. a "@" file can specify "@" files inside
it).

The options are:

-f prints a formfeed after each file.

-l# tells QP which parallel port to print to (i.e. -l2 for LPT2).
LPT1 is the default.

The source code (written in Turbo C) is included so you can laugh at my
(lack of) programming style. I compiled it using the "tiny" memory model,
then created QP.COM with DOS's EXE2BIN program.

--- Rob Epps (GEnie mail address R.EPPS)