etownandy Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 Do any of the 4A emulators allow for actual printing? I know MAME allows you to "print" to a file. Let's say I'm using Page Pro and want to get an actual hard copy of a page. How might that be done with an emulator? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 Right, you can print to a file in MAME, but this file will be filled with printer control codes for the selected printer. I can imagine that printers could be emulated, but I actually don't know whether there is already work in progress. (If so, may I add some impact printer noise? ) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 You can output text in Classic99 to the CLIP device. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etownandy Posted June 14, 2017 Author Share Posted June 14, 2017 Only text, though? I mean, it's pretty simple to "print" to PIO in MAME from something like TI-Writer or Funnelweb, take the resulting .txt file, and import it into a word processor on macOS/Windows/Linux/etc for actual printing. But I'm more interested in graphics (as in my PagePro example). I know Bruce Harrison did some work on printing to ink jet printers...not sure what encoding they used (PCL maybe?) although that was mostly for printing TI-Artist files and such. It's not like I NEED to do this, of course...a modern word processor runs circles around something like PagePro (although I bet most of them won't let me type in any direction as easily). But it would be nice to get some output as I'm playing around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 I started an Epson emulator after failing to find much I could use on the net, but I got bogged down and it turned into a larger task than I planned. I've no idea if I will revisit it, but it doesn't do anything today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 Tursi If you revisit and build it, please let me know! I've looked for an emulator to take a ti-writer file and print to pc. Many doc files for software written back in the old days to be ran thru the formatter. It would be nice to put them to pdf for archival purposes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Robot Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 Looks like this might be a thing https://github.com/RWAP/PrinterToPDF 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RWAP Posted September 8, 2017 Share Posted September 8, 2017 Looks like this might be a thing https://github.com/RWAP/PrinterToPDF Well spotted - this is one of my projects and a spin off from my Retro-Printer project - www.retroprinter.com The PrinterToPDF is the public domain version of the conversion code - it is written in C and tested running on a Raspberry Pi. It handles most of the ESC/P2 control codes so is more versatile than many of the older projects you can find out there. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted September 11, 2017 Share Posted September 11, 2017 Well spotted - this is one of my projects and a spin off from my Retro-Printer project - www.retroprinter.com The PrinterToPDF is the public domain version of the conversion code - it is written in C and tested running on a Raspberry Pi. It handles most of the ESC/P2 control codes so is more versatile than many of the older projects you can find out there. Cool. Nice to know you are here :thumbsup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etownandy Posted September 15, 2017 Author Share Posted September 15, 2017 Nice! I'll have to play around with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 15, 2017 Share Posted September 15, 2017 Tursi If you revisit and build it, please let me know! I've looked for an emulator to take a ti-writer file and print to pc. Many doc files for software written back in the old days to be ran thru the formatter. It would be nice to put them to pdf for archival purposes. I have been thinking for quite a long time about writing a translator in Forth to take a TI-Writer-formatted document to something like PDF or TeX. Lately, I have been looking at RTF as an intermediate output because it looks easier than PDF (I have not looked at TeX for ages). An RTF file can be read and converted by MS Word or OOO Writer to PDF. I think this would be relatively easy to do for Classic99 because it can be configured to write Windows text files. Some limitations I would probably impose: Ignore any transliterate commands that start with ‘27’, but maybe all transliterate commands Allow the user to specify fonts other than “Courier New”, but only for fill-formatted text Impose user-modifiable, but minimum, top and bottom margins of 1/4", managing font size to accommodate page-length format commands Maybe ignore page-length commands altogether Ignore mail-merge and alternate-input commands (should not affect any archive-worthy documents) As you can see, I have not traversed far in this project—just SOC rambling at this juncture! ...lee 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted September 16, 2017 Share Posted September 16, 2017 Lee I'd be happy to test if it ever comes to fruition! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 24, 2017 Share Posted September 24, 2017 For a TI Writer translator, perhaps I should include additional formatter codes for third-party-enhanced versions of TI Writer. TI Writer v5.0 by R. A. Green is the only one for which I have a manual. Any suggestions? ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted September 25, 2017 Share Posted September 25, 2017 I'd say that all of the codes should be shown in that documentation. I can scrounge around in my files and probably find some other stuff. Do you think TL commands will be included? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 25, 2017 Share Posted September 25, 2017 I'd say that all of the codes should be shown in that documentation. I can scrounge around in my files and probably find some other stuff. That would be great. Do you think TL commands will be included? That will be difficult because some of them may be printer control codes and I definitely do not want to support those. For RAG TI Writer v5.0, it is simple. “.PC” is used for printer control codes and are easy to ignore. If I allow “.TL”, I will need to parse each command string to limit the transliteration to acceptable ASCII codes. This would be all printable characters. I may try to convert three-character combinations with a BS character in the middle to the single character likely intended, e.g., “.TL123:110,8,126” would convert ‘{’ to ‘ñ’. But, I will probably not be able to anticipate all combinations and may simply choose the alphabetic character if there is only one, or the first, if there are two. I could also emit a special character, like ‘█’, to signal a need to check the original. TL definitely complicates things. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted September 25, 2017 Share Posted September 25, 2017 (edited) Lee, Hopefully these will help. TIW_Supplement.pdf TIW_Tips&Tricks.pdf using-the-ti-writer-word-processor.pdf the-writers.pdf Edited September 25, 2017 by sparkdrummer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted September 25, 2017 Share Posted September 25, 2017 At least while printing to a modern system, documents containing .TL codes can make a mess of things, especially when you get to double strike or highlighted text, you'll end up with four lines of normal text instead of one darker section. That kind output requires a lot of post editing. While it would be nice to 'fix' that problem, for how little it would be used, it might not be worth the programming effort. I was never a person who used the Text Formatter much, as most of my documents were much smaller, besides I just hardcoded the control "U" codes directly into the document. If that capability was to be supported, I'm fairly certain the Epson control codes would be the way to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 25, 2017 Share Posted September 25, 2017 Lee, Hopefully these will help. ... Unfortunately, they did not show me any formatter codes beyond normal TI Writer codes. They did, however, point up the need to handle embedded printer control codes in addition to transliteration. The difficulty with embedded codes is that any codes that include printable characters will not be handled properly, because I am not writing an interpreter for printer control codes. I daresay that most archive-worthy documents did not use embedded printer control codes. If they did, the output will not likely be pretty and will need editing. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 25, 2017 Share Posted September 25, 2017 At least while printing to a modern system, documents containing .TL codes can make a mess of things, especially when you get to double strike or highlighted text, you'll end up with four lines of normal text instead of one darker section. That kind output requires a lot of post editing. While it would be nice to 'fix' that problem, for how little it would be used, it might not be worth the programming effort. I was never a person who used the Text Formatter much, as most of my documents were much smaller, besides I just hardcoded the control "U" codes directly into the document. If that capability was to be supported, I'm fairly certain the Epson control codes would be the way to go. As I indicated above, I have no intention of supporting printer control codes. Non-printable characters are easy to ignore, but printable characters that are part of printer control codes are another story. The formatter commands for “bold”, “underline” and “required space” have RTF equivalents that are easy to emit. Transliteration, where not a simple one-to-one, printable-character replacement, though not easy, is not as difficult to handle as embedded printer control codes. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 26, 2017 Share Posted September 26, 2017 Does anybody know what happens in the TI Writer Formatter if ‘@’, ‘&’ and ‘^’ are transliterated? ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted October 8, 2017 Share Posted October 8, 2017 Does anyone know what information is contained in the last record of a TI Writer file? Here are the last records in hex of four D/V80 TI Writer files: 16 80 86 80 AD 86 8B 90 95 9F D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 80 86 17 80 86 80 B6 86 8B 90 95 9F D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 80 86 0D 17 80 86 80 B6 86 8B 90 95 9F D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 80 86 0D 17 80 86 80 AD 86 8B 90 95 9F D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 D5 80 86 0D The first byte is the character count of the record. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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