Display Resolutions - Printing
This
gives the technical details like memory requirements, memory tuning etc for
ALP. This information may solve installation, printing related problems, if
any. ALP is a word-processor for multi-lingual processing. Since the task of
displaying graphics and manipulating them is vastly more complex than just displaying
English characters, it takes up a lot of memory and is, comparatively, slow.
However, tuning other memory requirements on machine can yield significant improvements
in performance.
Remove
all unnecessary drivers that may not be used in that session. A good idea is
to have two sets of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Name one set *.ALP and the
other *.BKP (for backup, as *.BAK files easily get deleted.) Set up a batch
file that will copy one or the other as required. This way, you will not have
to edit the files all the time. On the other hand, most device drivers have
a "hot-key" which will not cause it to load. For e.g., the GIST device
driver will not load if the "Esc" key is pressed at the time of boot
up. The QEMM386.SYS/EMM386.EXE will not load if the "Ctrl" key is
pressed at time of booting.
a)
The most efficient memory manager used here is QEMM386.Also in DOS6.22 and above
EMM386.EXE is used instead of QEMM386.EXE. This program will, in some cases,
provide an application program with more than 640Kb that is the usually available
memory. This is achieved by loading all the programs in the upper memory areas
that are made accessible when the manager is installed. To increase memory availability
immediately, just load QEMM386.SYS into your CONFIG.SYS:
device=c:\qemm\qemm386.sys
for DOS 5.0
OR
device= c:\dos\emm386.exefor DOS 6.22
All device drivers that
are otherwise there can then be loaded into the memory now available by simply
using LOADHI.SYS. For e.g., if you have the GIST device driver installed, add
the following to it:
device=c:\qemm\loadhi.sys
\gist\gistdrv.sys
TSRs
in the AUTOEXEC.BAT can be loaded into upper memory using the LOADHI.EXE program.
If you previously had DOSEDIT loading into the memory, change it thus:
loadhi
dosedit
b) Some drivers like the
NetWare shell can be directly loaded into expanded/extended memory. These are
the XMSNETX and the EMSNETX
c) In DOS 5.0, use DOS=HIGH
in the config.sys to relocate DOS in EXM i.e. expanded memory.
d) Use less number of files
and buffers in CONFIG.SYS unless required by Windows or Novell NetWare.
Because
of Insufficient memory you may not be in a position to use ALP. In that case
ALP will flush a message like 'LOCK IS MISSING' or 'INSUFFICIENT MEMORY' and
come out to the prompt. So in these situations using above 4-5 steps try to
free up the memory for ALP.
Display Resolutions -
Printing
ALP
uses a special format bit-map font, both for display as well as for printing.
This means that the entire bitmap image of a line or page has to be composed
before it can be printed. Since we are dealing with multiple languages as well
as multiple attributes, this is essentially a complex process and explains why
printing is slower than English packages. In future, we hope to have downloadable
fonts which will be faster only if many pages are being printed and/or the printer
has sufficient memory (4Mb and above). The steps involved in printing right
now are:
When
ALP is printing, an evolving bar appears on the right top corner of the screen.
As long as this bar is forming and deforming, printing is taking place. Printing
can be aborted at any time by pressing ESC. If the printing bar does not appear
or if it stops, printing is not being done. The nature of the error can be often
determined by pressing ESC. The message conveys the error. Choosing the right
printer driver will ensure the correct printing. There are only a few drivers
in ALP. Even though there are literally hundreds of printers in the market,
most of them have some compatibility with one of the drivers provided, as these
are the most popular and standard printers. This is called the emulation mode.
Epson emulation is most common among all dot-matrix printers, while the LaserJet
emulation is available on all laser printers. It is possible to use Epson 24
pin printers in 9-pin mode (i.e. with the Epson_9pin driver selected). In this
case, the text is printed in a size larger than the standard size, which is
produced by the Pin24 driver. To use other printers in one of the emulation
modes, certain settings have to be made. These can be either through dip-switch
settings or through menus on laser printers. Most of the time a single dip-switch
or setting is all that is required to enable ALP to print. However, some printers
have an additional setting which will enable or disable AUTO CR LF. Look out
for this setting in any of the printer manuals where printing does not take
place even after the emulation mode is set. One sure sign of this problem is
alternate lines having the same data. Printing to file is one way of eliminating
the time required to create fresh bitmaps when multiple copies are to be made.
The only time spent is in transferring the data to the printer. On laser printers,
it is much faster to set the number of copies to the required figure rather
than using it from the ALP menu's to be done is to change the LPT port to the
one that is redirected to the Network Spooler (captured). ALP will automatically
detect that this is a network port and behave accordingly. The system used is
not totally foolproof. Occasionally, data may get corrupted or mis-aligned.
One safe way to print on a network server is to print from ALP to file and then
use NPRINT to send it to the required queue.
Like
printing, spell-checking too, is a memory hog. On low memory machines, spellchecker
may not run at all, or if it does, it will in the Basic mode. This means that
Ignores, Adds and Replaces will not work or will work in a very limited manner.
More memory will have to be freed up to make it work. If you spellchecker, on
and off in one ALP session, then more and more memory is used to store all the
ignored words. Sooner or later, the insufficient memory message will pop up.
Multilingual document can be spell checked one language after the other, using
the different programs supplied.
This
is an unknown menu for most people. In case of demonstrations, one can hook
up a VGA-PAL converter and increase the size of the onscreen display without
having to put attributes on each line, using the expand and highlight option
on. Numbers can be seen in the regional script if the Numscr is on. The feature
of regular use is to save all the settings to a configuration file for later
reuse. This includes options like the printer driver, the port, the default
script, and the status of the other options available.
Conversions
from ACII to ISFOC are effected using the converter. There are a number of options
that can be used to ensure appropriate conversions.
|
|