Character mode reports in NT printer problem with prt files

From: Tony Brown <tb_at_arete.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 14:58:06 +0100
Message-ID: <4Xf2LBAu9Z01Ew6v@arete.demon.co.uk>

We have a fundamental problem having converted some reports from Reportwriter 1. to Reports 2.5

The original reports were in character mode and so we continued to use the same mode.

When we print using Runproduct with mode=character, desformat=xxxx (where xxxx is a .prt file with esc characters in for orientation and bold etc) the printer output contains the escape code sequences as text rather than taking notice of them.

The problem only occurs on NT printers - if we print using our netware print server it acts correctly and the escape sequences are processed as expected.

The prt file is as follows :

printer "crsl"

height 40
width 200

before report esc "&l1O" esc "(0N" esc "&k2S" esc "&l6D"

after report esc "&l0O" esc "(8U"

after page control(L)

return control(M)

linefeed      control(J)
code "bold on"        esc "(s7B"
code "bold off"       esc "(s0B"
code "underline on"   esc "&d0D"
code "underline off"  esc "&d@"

code "bold underline on" esc "(s7B" esc"&d0D" code "bold underline off" esc "&d@" esc "(s0B"

If anyone knows a workaround I would be very grateful as we have dozens of these reports and converting them to bitmap (which does seem to work) will be a large and expensive job.

Thanks in Advance

Tony Brown

Tony Brown
Arete Software Limited
Tel : +44 (0) 1344 867706
Fax : +44 (0) 1344 867714
Email : tb_at_arete.demon.co.uk Received on Wed Aug 12 1998 - 08:58:06 CDT