Re: Changing CPI now working in scs2pdf -- LINUX5250

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Scott Klement wrote:

> > I'm also wondering if the fonts used and the sizes should be user
> > selectable.  Right now you get Courier 10 point for 10 CPI, and Courier
> > Bold for bold, Courier 8 point for 12 CPI, and Courier 6 point for 16 CPI.
> > Maybe someone would like to use something besides Courier?  And maybe
> > different point sizes?
>
> It seems to me that the best way would be to translate OS/400's output
> to a corresponding font.   So, you can create a document on the iSeries,
> get everything working there and send it to your PC to make a PDF.

This is tricky.  The testing I've done only shows the CPI being sent if a
document uses more than one CPI setting in the document.  But I'm sure my
testing is incomplete because even if a document only uses 15 CPI
throughout the printer must be told to do so.

But let's suppose that we get the initial CPI setting and it is 10 CPI.
How do we translate that to a corresponding font?  Right now 10 CPI is
hardcoded to be 10 point Courier because 10 point Courier fits on an
8.5x11 piece of paper about the same way that an 80 column, 10 CPI report
fits on the same paper.  12 CPI is hardcoded to be a little smaller point
size and 16 is a little smaller again.  Do we just make a map (like we
basically have now) that says CPI x is equal to point size y?

If we do make a map, suppose that someone doesn't like our choices for
what point size goes with what CPI.  That leads to ...

> It seems unlikely that someone would want to change their PC config
> individually for every document that they want different features on.

I meant the ability to choose fonts/size as in font_80 and font_132 in
.tn5250rc.  Something like:

host {
        pdf_points_10cpi 13;
        pdf_points_12cpi 10;
        pdf_points_13cpi 9;
        etc...
}

> When I type '?OVRPRTF' on my iseries, it tells me that the possible values
> for CPI are 5, 10, 12, 13.3, 15, 16.7, 18 and 20.

Okay maybe I should make a map for these sizes.

There may be another solution to this problem.  I think I remember reading
in the PDF specs about defining your own fonts.  Maybe we could define a
font that is measured in characters per inch instead of points.  Then a
lot of this would be more straightforward.  Of course the size of the page
is still always measured in points.  We could also just say to use a point
size of (72 points per inch)/(characters per inch).  I've tried that and
everything comes out way too small.

> James, have you given any thought to how all your new printer code will
> integrate with the Windows lp5250d?  Or have you thought about porting it
> to the 0.16.x branch, so that it'll make it into the next release?  Or was
> the plan to get it stable in the 0.17.x branch, and then port it after
> it's stable?

Short, honest answer: I haven't given it any thought.

Truth is, I've never programmed a line of code on Windows.  I started
working a little with mingw and the win32 port of glib over the weekend,
but it doesn't seem to work right with NT.  I don't even have a computer
with Windows on it, so I have to borrow one to do work with it (not too
hard, seems like everyone has one).  I spent about 40 minutes trying to
figure out how to make changes to the system PATH.

I sort of thought that 0.16.x branch would become obsolete and if people
wanted to use scs2pdf then they would have to get cvs from the trunk.  So
I didn't think at all about porting until you mentioned that pipes in
Windows really suck and that you had an alternate way of doing things.  I
was going to search through the archives for the message where you
explained your approach but I haven't gotten to it yet.  I'm hoping your
approach is really easy...

And I wouldn't feel bad if tn5250 and the associated software was the
killer application that got everyone to stop using windows and switch to
something better.  Hacking on windows (I'm finding out) is no fun, and I
know supporting it isn't either.  I wouldn't mind if it just went away.
Of course that doesn't mean I'm going to write some function
I_only_run_on_the_One_True_OS("Linux") either :)  I'll take a more serious
look at the win32 directory now that it is in cvs HEAD.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com