Printing on OKI Microline 420 with bold, italics, underline, etc
Posted by 24bpp@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 7 comments
I just hooked up my OKI ML420. When I print with the normal OKI driver, the font doesn't look exactly right. This is even with the provided "Utility 12CPI" font. I believe this is because Windows prints in a strange way. (something like it basically prints an image of it instead of actually sending text?)
This can be avoided with the Generic/Text only driver as it seems to actually send text to the printer. The issue is that things like bold and italics get removed. Although I don't exactly need any text decoration, it would be nice to have them.
Is there a way to print with the text decorations without it being printed in the previously mentioned "strange way"?
Linuxmonger@reddit
Sort of.
If you run old DOS software that has the configuration for that printer, or you're willing to add it in yourself, yes.
But one of the points of Windows was that you didn't need to do all of that.
I remember typing escape codes out from 100 plus page printer manuals to get things like 'turn on italics', or 'switch to proportional font' for DOS versions of Lotus-123 & WordPerfect 4.0.
Windows didn't need as much, just how to print a 9*9 graphic. It rendered everything to a picture of text, then printed the picture.
And that's why today, when people get a screen of text that they could copy and paste to a help desk ticket, they send a picture of text instead.
uberRegenbogen@reddit
“that's why today, when people get a screen of text that they could copy and paste to a help desk ticket, they send a picture of text instead.”
Not really. Both involve representing text as a bitmap; but the latter is usually PEBCAK—sometimes the user not having the sense to copy the text as text, sometimes the developer not making the text copyable.
gcc-O2@reddit
And today, printer standards like Mopria where this is the only way to print, is considered some huge advantage, as opposed to PostScript and PCL for some reason
codykonior@reddit
Classic printer.
grimacefry@reddit
I used that same printer in the day, with WordPerfect and the right drivers never had any issues with formatting, when you install the printer drivers it also installs the fonts. That was the case with most DOS stuff. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 made it alot easier to print decent looking stuff with the OKI. Same deal, installing the printer drivers will also install printer fonts which you can select in any Windows program.
Enlightenment777@reddit
Maybe re-save the document to RTF file format, then write software to parse and convert it into OKI escape code + ASCII file that you can send to the printer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format
gcc-O2@reddit
I never found a way to get Windows programs to use escape sequences for bold/italic/underline either. Windows 3.x will list "printer fonts" and perhaps that was a way to do it back then. But to achieve WYSIWYG and TrueType fonts, it seems "send everything to dot matrix printers as a bitmap" caught on very early. I believe Macintosh did this all the way back to the days of ImageWriter IIs and never bothered sending native ASCII to them.
In the days of actually using a dot matrix printer's native capability to print text, things like WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS (which includes purpose-built printer drivers) would've been the way mainstream people did it.
A while ago, I played with using a termcap definition to convince GNU groff to do bold/italic/underline and it seemed to work. Unless you want to go to that trouble, it's going to be easiest to look up the ESC/P sequences and just write a small program that uses them and then send its raw output to the printer.