Re: overprinting ASCII on Laserjet?

Robert Wood <rob...@ionet.net> writes:
>
> > : >make it treat a CR(Carriage return) as what it should be (reset to left
> > : >margin, but do not advance the line).  But no matter how I set Line
> > : >Termination, it always prints a line, hits the CR, and advances the

Well actually the printer is obeying the CRs. They just have no
discernable result on the output.


> combination are interpreted.  But in another place in the HP codes it says tha
t
> the LF (linefeed) ASCII 10 is interpreted as CR (carriage return) ASCII 13.

Which is true.

Try <blank> <any-character> <CR> <second-char> <CR> <LF> <FF>

And you should find <second-char> <any-character> on the page.


> Since a laser places toner on the drum as it goes (I am assuming
here),

It doesn't, that is why your attempts failled.


> I was
> hoping someone else in the group could either confirm that "overprinting" is
> impossible, or they could give me a hint at how to control the printer to

Overprinting (also called overstriking) only works on printer
mechanisms, where lines are printed separately (and can therefore be
overprinted) by dropping an LF. These are called line printers. Dot
matrix fit this, daisy wheel did also, some inkjets may still do.


Lasers (and most inkjets) are page printers. In these the entire page
is rendered onto an large slab of RAM (like an video cards display
RAM) and then tranfered at once to paper.

Overprinting simply sets RAM bits, which are allready set. So you see
no effect, despite them being set twice. Bits are 0 or 1, setting them
twice does not make an 2 out of them.


The nearist thing you can do is get an program that understands
overstriking and converts it into escape sequences for bold
printing. Like the GNU "less" file viewer does.

BTW: printing the line twice with CR is the wrong way for most of
these programs, they usually want <char1> <BS> <char1> <char2> <BS>
<char2> ..., they also user <unserscore> <BS> <char> to underline.


Neil "printerless, gave up printers when green stripy went out" Franklin

--
Neil Franklin, Nerd, Geek, Unix Guru, Hacker, Mystic
nei...@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/
20th century record companies fit the 21st century data highways
as good as 19th century stagecoaches fit the 20th century freeways

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