Look how great: printing with The Last Word

[Marius]

Hi People,

 

For some people it is not news, but I'm using my atari 800xl for serious stuff. I do my business administration with Syncalc (I have a small business, running my own private music school with 50-100 students) and I also like to write short texts with The Last Word. I love the Atari, since it does not distract me... like my PC/Mac do with all the news, e-mails, facebook and all that.

 

The last weeks I have been playing with The Last Word, and found some tiny bugs which Flashjazzcat almost instantly fixed for me (New version will be released soon).

 

I created two printerdrivers. One for my Star LC20 (which is compatible with LC10, NL10, NX1000) and one for my Brother HL5140, which is compatible with any Laserprinter using PCL code.

 

I would like to share my printertest photo's:

 

Print result Star LC20

 

 

Print result Brother HL 5140

 

 

Print result Brother HL 5140 LANDSCAPE

 

 

Print result Brother HL 5140 Portrait + Landscape

 

 

I'm still doing some experiments. I asked FJC for some extra features like more styles (now I'm limited to 5 styles) and I have some more requests.

 

I think TLW is amazing, and with the right printerdriver, you can get very nice results.

 

If TLW updated version is ready for download, I'll share my printerdrivers for you.

 

Oh and yes... the printertest is in Dutch, sorry for that...

 

Greetz

Marius

 

 

[Gunstar]

I use my Atari similarly, professional writing on LTW and I also do personal finance and business administration with the great Syn series software.I probably wouldn't if most of these programs didn't use my expanded memory, but they do! I have yet to print anything out on my Atari though. I have a Panasonic dot-matrix printer I used with Microprint interface, but that's part of my system that is still in storage since I moved last year.

 

But I will be printing with my Atari once I get that stuff out of storage. Does LTW allow you to create printer drivers with it? Or are you creating them from scratch and patching them to LTW, or what?

I haven't even bothered to look into it, but does LTW come with some printer drivers? I've just been loading my work up to my PC with SIO2PC and printing out on my HP deskjet, plain text so far. I believe my Panasonic printer is compatible with the NX1000 and also Epson standards.

 

What would be great is if I could use the ABBUCC/Atarimax USB cartridge with LTW and a printer driver and modern deskjet printer attached.

 

what kind of printer interface are you using with the laser printer, Is it the old Centronix standard connector or what?

Edited October 19, 2016 by Gunstar

[Marius]

Hi!

 

TLW works with external printer drivers. You can edit printercodes with TLW itself.

 

My laserprinter has parallel port. I have several interfaces for the atari. There is the cheaper microprint interface. Available at www.rewindgames.com and iirc at abbuc shop.

 

I mainly use atari 850 which is excellent for almost anything.

 

And I could print using the blackbox printer port which has printer spooler so the atari is sooner ready to use even when printer is still busy.

 

I am not using usb printer...

[flashjazzcat]

Printer driver creation is discussed in Chapter 6 of the manual (and the creation of a sample Star LC-10 driver described). Everything is plain text as ProWizard mentioned. ProWizard was also the first to report some bugs in (apparently) rarely used print processor facilities of the most recent TLW revisions. It appears that most users edit text in TLW and print from the PC, but ProWizard's use of an actual printer has proved extremely helpful.

Edited October 20, 2016 by flashjazzcat

[Gunstar]

Hi!

 

TLW works with external printer drivers. You can edit printercodes with TLW itself.

 

My laserprinter has parallel port. I have several interfaces for the atari. There is the cheaper microprint interface. Available at www.rewindgames.com and iirc at abbuc shop.

 

I mainly use atari 850 which is excellent for almost anything.

 

And I could print using the blackbox printer port which has printer spooler so the atari is sooner ready to use even when printer is still busy.

 

I am not using usb printer...

I already have the Microprint interface I use with my Panasonic printer, thanks. I was wondering if your laserprinter was older (parallel) or newer (USB) and if an interface was used for SIO to USB printing and if drivers had been or could be done for modern printers. I just started looking into ABBUC/Atarimax USB cartridge for instance, and since it's release there are a lot of great USB drivers for it now, and maybe this device would be used with TLW to hook modern printer directly to the Atari instead of us having to use old printers, even if lazer. Or if such drivers might be included in TLW that I am as yet unaware of. I'm learning it as I go along based on what I need to do.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

Printer driver creation is discussed in Chapter 6 of the manual (and the creation of a sample Star LC-10 driver described). Everything is plain text as ProWizard mentioned. ProWizard was also the first to report some bugs in (apparently) rarely used print processor facilities of the most recent TLW revisions. It appears that most users edit text in TLW and print from the PC, but ProWizard's use of an actual printer has proved extremely helpful.

And this is what I have been doing, printing from the PC, but I do want to cut the umbilical cord to the PC and use my Panasonic or even better, hook my HP deskjet to my Atari via an interface and driver.

[flashjazzcat]

Only a few legacy drivers are supplied with TLW. I'd love to hook my laser printer up to the A8 myself, but it's USB and I'm not aware of any connectivity solution. When I was writing the supplied drivers (years ago), I just referred to a handful of manuals for Atari and Epson-compatible dot matrix printers. Hopefully the driver model is flexible enough to suit most needs (you get to define your own control strings in a plain text file to toggle underline, bold, italic, etc, plus a number of user-defined styles).

[Gunstar]

Only a few legacy drivers are supplied with TLW. I'd love to hook my laser printer up to the A8 myself, but it's USB and I'm not aware of any connectivity solution. When I was writing the supplied drivers (years ago), I just referred to a handful of manuals for Atari and Epson-compatible dot matrix printers. Hopefully the driver model is flexible enough to suit most needs (you get to define your own control strings in a plain text file to toggle underline, bold, italic, etc, plus a number of user-defined styles).

I just mentioned above a connectivity solution in the ABBUC/Atarimax USB cartridge available from Atarimax. And though the cocumentation linked below says driver development is in the very early stages, that is dated. A forum for the device is active at Atarimax forums where lots of advancements and drivers have been posted and discussed. I have not read it all myself and don't know if one has yet been done for modern USB printers, especially for use with TLW. And also there is a link in the docs below to microUSB.org site with XL/XE info.

 

http://www.atarimax.com/usbcart/documentation/

Edited October 20, 2016 by Gunstar

[flashjazzcat]

Thanks - that looks most interesting, and I'd completely overlooked it.

[UNIXcoffee928]

Only a few legacy drivers are supplied with TLW. I'd love to hook my laser printer up to the A8 myself, but it's USB and I'm not aware of any connectivity solution. When I was writing the supplied drivers (years ago), I just referred to a handful of manuals for Atari and Epson-compatible dot matrix printers. Hopefully the driver model is flexible enough to suit most needs (you get to define your own control strings in a plain text file to toggle underline, bold, italic, etc, plus a number of user-defined styles).

The HP 1200 Series Laser printer has both Centronics & USB ports, and it is a great, sturdy printer with lots of longevity. They have an expandable buffer, and are pretty quick. Highly recommended.

 

They can always be had for a good price on ebay, and the toner cartridges are very reasonable. A single cartridge will last you for years, though as they are high capacity.

 

Here's an ebay link.

[Irgendwer]

I'd love to hook my laser printer up to the A8 myself, but it's USB and I'm not aware of any connectivity solution.

 

If you have a parallel interface for the A8, this could be a (expensive) solution:

http://www.ak-nord.de/Printserver/LPT2USB-Cable.html

(Page can be switched to English at the top). Don't ask me how good this works, maybe worth a try...

[Gunstar]

The HP 1200 Series Laser printer has both Centronics & USB ports, and it is a great, sturdy printer with lots of longevity. They have an expandable buffer, and are pretty quick. Highly recommended.

 

They can always be had for a good price on ebay, and the toner cartridges are very reasonable. A single cartridge will last you for years, though as they are high capacity.

 

Here's an ebay link.

Thanks for this info. I can use my MicroPrint interface with this baby and the reasonable price is for a laser printer, not a Deskjet that gets ruined if rained or spilled on. I need this printer for my writing. But I still want to hook up my deskjet via the USB cartridge for color printing.

Edited October 21, 2016 by Gunstar

[Kyle22]

 

If you have a parallel interface for the A8, this could be a (expensive) solution:

http://www.ak-nord.de/Printserver/LPT2USB-Cable.html

(Page can be switched to English at the top). Don't ask me how good this works, maybe worth a try...

Now, we need a good, up to date, comprehensive list of REAL Printers. By real, I mean non-GDI (aka WinPrinters). This information is also useful for anyone (such as myself) that still uses DOS applications.

[Marius]

Lol even Steven Ballmer is doing a motivation speech:

 

 

 

Developers!

Developers!

Developers!

 

FJC thinks: huh me??

Edited November 30, 2016 by ProWizard

[Steve Mynott]

The HP 1200 Series Laser printer has both Centronics & USB ports, and it is a great, sturdy printer with lots of longevity. They have an expandable buffer, and are pretty quick. Highly recommended.

 

They can always be had for a good price on ebay, and the toner cartridges are very reasonable. A single cartridge will last you for years, though as they are high capacity.

 

Here's an ebay link.

 

I can second this! I bought an original HP1200 in 1998 and the toner lasted about 15 years with very light use! It still prints (although its faint). Sadly the replacement toner I bought cheap off Ebay didn't work although I'm sure decent replacements still exist!

[+bob1200xl]

I use an HP LJ Pro 400 on my Atari. This is a newer, fast and cheap laser printer that performs very well. I can feed labels, large-format checks, 3x5 cards, and all sorts of paper. It will also print on both sides of the paper. As an example, I wrote a little BASIC program that reads the disk directory and prints it on a 3x5 card, which I slide into the disk sleeve. Much better that printing a label that gets stuck on the disk.

 

The only problem is that the LJ400 does not have a parallel port.

 

You can get around that by attaching your LJ400 to a PC USB port and the PC to a USB2SIO adaptor. The later levels of APE will allow you to print from your Atari using the Windows driver or direct PCL code.

 

Bob

 

[joeatari]

If anyone has a PCL PDR file for "The Last Word", can you please share it? I want to use an HP 5P Laser Printer. Thanks!