February 1999: dL4 Printing
dL4 3.2 Makes Printing Easier
For everyone struggling to setup printers in dL4 for Windows, a solution has arrived. dL4 release 3.2 for Windows and Unix is now available from our website, www.unibasic.com. The Windows version includes a new page printer driver which makes it possible to output to any Windows printer. The driver can be opened to a specific printer name or to the system default printer. You can also allow the user to choose the printer via the standard Windows printer dialog box. The driver does not require any device specific configuration, such as a printer definition file, because Windows is performing all device dependent formatting. The printer can even perform fax service if a Microsoft or third-party fax driver has been installed.
Unlike earlier printer drivers in dL4, the new printer driver uses page-oriented output rather than line-oriented output. Hence, it is possible to use cursor positioning to output anywhere on the current page. The current page is not physically printed until either a line scrolls off the bottom of the page, a ‘FF’ or a ‘CS’ mnemonic is printed, or the driver is closed.
The printer driver allows the current font to be changed by using the ‘FONTFACE’ mnemonic. This mnemonic has a single string parameter which is the font name such as "Courier", "Courier New", "Helvetica" or "Arial". It is also possible to change the size of characters by using the ‘FONTSIZE’ mnemonic. Examples may be found in the readme.txt file accompanying the release.
While the printer driver is specific to the Windows release, there are a number of new features available for both Unix and Windows. A new "Serial Terminal" driver has been added to allow programs to open serial communication devices to a Window class driver. The input and output to a serial device follow the same rules as screen keyboard I/O using this driver. The "Serial Terminal" driver allows a program to set device dependent line speed and data format. Furthermore, a program can enable several types of input or output flow control, such as XON/XOFF flow control.
The new ForcePortDump intrinsic call causes a target port to abort execution of the current dL4 program, produce a dump listing file, and then exit from dL4. For debugging purposes, it is also possible to trigger a dump listing without causing the program to exit. The dump output is identical to that of the ProgramDump intrinsic CALL and lists the current execution location of the target program, the CALL stack, current variable values, the status of open channels, and various other values.
A large number of intrinsic calls, such as AvPort, DateToJulian, FormatDate, JulianToDate, StringSearch, and VerifyDate have been introduced in version 3.2. These calls are UniBasic compatible and replace all of the functions, except for CALL DYNWIND, in the oldcalls.bas and depcalls.bas libraries of dl4.samples.
Finally, a handy feature of dL4 version 3.2 is the ability to directly append to a text file without first reading to the end of the file. The record number -4 has been defined in the text file driver to position to the end of a file.
Please visit our website to obtain a copy of dL4 version 3.2. You may also want to download the dL4 manuals.