Posted by Jim Guerber on March 29, 2006 at 14:58:50:
In Reply to: Help on Help posted by Stephen Auerbach on March 28, 2006 at 12:17:09:
What a good question! I, too am confused by this documentation. There are two places that I found that talk about mnemonics for generic printers. I suppose it should have been worded "generic printer mnemonics" not "mnemonics for generic printers".
Let's digress to Comet history. In the 80's (good old DOS days) Comet recognized two kinds of printers type 'R' for QSP printers on the Comet Board (remember that!), and type 'L' for printers connected to either the serial or parallel port of the host machine. It was MUCH more difficult to configure those printers (start/stop bits, baud rate, bi directional parallel port etc.).
Along came windows. Windows printers were configured by the printer name, and Comet connectes to the driver by opening that name just like a file open. There are still quirks (RAW etc), but in general it is much easier.
Signature then added several special "printers": HTML, text, PDF and email. And oh yes there was the old spool and the newer Document Manager.
Back to mnemonics. I think the only "generic mnemonic" that should be used today is (ff). It causes the page to be ejected, and a new page to begin. It is time for you to stop thinking the old line printer way, and start thinking about a windows printer as a canvas on which you can paint text, graphics, colors etc. Windows printers are GDI devices the same as any window on a screen. Use the windows mnemonics as documented here: