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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: cce.zizkov AT volny.cz, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Printing Russian
  • Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 03:21:03 +0000 (UTC)

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 cce.zizkov AT volny.cz wrote:

On 10 Jan 05 at 17:57, 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

sindi keesan wrote:

Is there some simple way to set up BL2 to type and
print Cyrillic

kdb.tgz has the keyboard and font programs, but how
does one print with downloadable fonts in linux?

Is your printer capable of printing Cyrillic characters?
By that I mean: character code in - Cyrillic character out.

Capable means:

1. either internal fonts - I do not know such a printer, is there
somebody on the list who knows whether there is any printer
who prints Russian as hardware default?

I don't know of any. I looked at the standard HP fonts and they are all just decorated versions of Latin.


2. or downloadable fonts - You send the character definition to the
printer once, switch it on with a short code sequence. Then every
8bit character (ASCII 128-255) will be printed with the uploaded
font. I own some for HP Laserjet but not for EPSON :-( Only old and
sentimental DOS veterans in the furthest Eastern countries may still
have such fonts on some floppies they forgot to throw away.

I have done this with 9 and 24pin dot-matrix printers and will look in my printer manual for the code - but how would I send the printer this code,

cat file-with-code-sequence > /dev/lp0 ?

How do you do it with dos, include the printer command in a file?
If so, could I do that in linux?

3. graphical - this is what we probably do not want on older
hardware.

Graphical printing is at least 8 times as slow

If the printer has no Cyrillic capability (either
built-in or as an add-on), then dot-by-dot printing
(in graphics mode) is your only option.

One of the two DOS program was designed to work on ANY printer with graphics capability, the other could use graphical or downloadable-font printing (9 or 24-pin Epson). My printers all do downloadable fonts.

>
If there is some interest I can upload Russian fonts for DOS charset
cp866 on HPLJ compatible printers. They contain Courier, Times and
Helvetica typefaces in a sufficient number of sizes.

That would be interesting. Do you think these printer fonts would also work in linux? The VGA screen fonts for DOS work in linux, apparently.
Could you give the printer the command to load the fonts in DOS and then load linux and print Russian instead of the usual extended ASCII?


After having uploaded the fonts to the printer you, however, need
to select typeface/size with code-sequences. But this can easily
be done by linux scripts. Translating to charset cp866 should not
be a problem either (sed script). Difficulties will appear
with text alignment, columns, etc. of proportional typefaces.
This is what a wordprocessor usually does.

No need for proportional fonts, or typeface size selection, just a default monospaced font. My HP 500s actually have hardware settings for choosing number of columns.

I would love to amaze my Czech and Macedonian friends with typed letters (especially since my handwriting is not too legible).


Zdravím, Christof Lange

________________________________________________________________

Českobratrská církev evangelická - Betlémská kaple na Žižkově
Prokopova 4/216, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic
Tel. (+420) 222 78 06 73 / 222 78 20 02 / 603 18 87 53
http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov

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